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JOSEPH M900N0UGH 
RARE BOOKS 



POLITICAL PAMPHLETS 



THE POCKET LIBRARY 

OF 

ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Edited by GEORGE SAINTSBURY 

A collection, in separate volumes, partly of extracts from 
long books, partly of short pieces, by the same writer, on the 
same subject, or of the same class. 

Vol. I. — Tales of Mystery. 
II. — Political Verse. 
III. — Defoe's Minor Novels. 
IV. — Political Pamphlets. 
V. — Seventeenth Century Lyrics. 
VI. — Elizabethan and Jacobean Pamphlets. 



NEW YORK : MACMILLAN & CO. 



POLITICAL PAMPHLETS 



EDITED BY 

GEORGE SAINTSBURY 



3 t ' i J J J » -v 



NEW YORK 

MACMILLAN & CO. 

1892 



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CONTENTS 



I. Letter to a Dissenter. (By George Savile, 

Marquess of Halifax) ..... I 

II. The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. 

(By Daniel Defoe) 23 

III. The Drapier's Letters. (By Jonathan Swift) 

To the Tradesmen, Shop-Keepers, Farmers, and 
Common-People in general, of the Kingdom 
of Ireland; concerning the Brass half-pence 
coined by Mr. Wood ..... 47 

A Letter to Mr. Harding the Printer, upon 
occasion of a Paragraph in his News-Paper of 
August 1, 1724, relating to Mr. Wood's Half- 
pence ........ 64 

IV. Second Letter on a Regicide Peace. (By 

the Right Honourable Edmund Burke) . . 81 

V. Peter Plymley's Letters. (By Sydney Smith) 133 

VI. Letter to the Journeymen and Labourers 
of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ire- 
land. Letter to Jack Harrow. (By 
William Cobbett) 182 

VII. First Letter of Malachi Malagrowther. 

(By Sir Walter Scott) 249 



INTRODUCTION 

It is sometimes thought, and very often said, that 
political writing, after its special day is done, becomes 
more dead than any other kind of literature, or even 
journalism. I do not know whether my own judg- 
ment is perverted by the fact of a special devotion 
to the business, but it certainly seems to me that 
both the thought and the saying are mistakes. 
Indeed, a rough-and-ready refutation of them is 
supplied by the fact that, in no few cases, political 
pieces have entered into the generally admitted stock 
of the best literary things. If they are little read, 
can we honestly say that other things in the same 
rank are read much more ? And is there not the 
further plea, by no means contradictory, nor even 
merely alternative, that the best examples of them 
are, as a rule, merged in huge collected ' Works,' or, 
in the case of authors who have not attained to that 



viii Introduction 

dignity, simply inaccessible to the general ? At any 
rate my publishers have consented to let me try the 
experiment of gathering certain famous things of the 
sort in this volume, and the public must decide. 

I do not begin very early, partly because examples 
of the Elizabethan political pamphlet, or what supplied 
its place, will be given in another volume of the series 
exclusively devoted to the pamphlet literature of the 
reigns of Eliza and our James, partly for a still better 
reason presently to be explained. On the other 
hand, though another special volume is devoted to 
Defoe, the immortal Shortest Way with the Dissenters 
is separated from the rest of his work, and given here. 
Most of the contents, however, represent authors not 
otherwise represented in the series, and though very 
well known indeed by name, less read than quoted. 
The suitableness of the political pamphlet, both by size 
and self-containedness, for such a volume as this, needs 
no justification except that which it, like everything else, 
must receive, by being put to the proof of reading. 

There is no difficulty in showing, with at least 
sufficient critical exactness, why it is not possible or 
not desirable to select examples from very early 
periods even of strictly modern history. The causes 
are in part the same as those which delayed the 



Introduction ix 

production of really capital political verse (which has 
been treated in another volume), but they are not 
wholly the same. The Martin Marprelate pamphlets 
are strictly political ; so are many things earlier, later, 
and contemporary with them, by hands known and 
unknown, great and small, skilled and unskilled ; so 
are some even in the work of so great a man as Bacon. 
But very many things were wanting to secure the con- 
ditions necessary to the perfect pamphlet. There was 
not the political freedom ; there was not the public ; 
there was not the immediate object ; there was not, last 
and most of all, the style. Political utterances under a 
more or less despotic, or, as the modern euphemism 
goes, ' personal ' government, were almost necessarily 
those of a retained advocate, who expected his im- 
mediate reward, on the one hand; or of a rebel, 
who stood to make his account with office if he 
succeeded, or with savage punishment if he failed, 
on the other. A distant prospect of impeachment, 
of the loss of ears, hands, or life if the tide turns, 
is a stimulant to violence rather than to vigour. I 
do not think, however, that this is the most important 
factor in the problem. Parliamentary government, 
with a limited franchise of tolerably intelligent voters, 
a party system, and newspapers comparatively unde- 



x Introduction 

veloped, may not suit an ideally perfect politeia, but 
it is the very hotbed in which to nourish the pam- 
phlet. There is also a style, as there is a time, for 
all things ; and no style could be so well suited for 
the pamphlet as the balanced, measured, pointed, 
and polished style which Dryden and Tillotson and 
Temple brought in during the third quarter of the 
seventeenth century, and which did not go out of 
fashion till the second quarter of the nineteenth. 
We have indeed seen pamphlets proper exercising 
considerable influence in quite recent times; but 
in no instance that I can remember has this been 
due to any literary merits, and I doubt whether 
even the bare fact will be soon or often renewed 
in our days. The written word — the written word of 
condensed, strengthened, spirited literature — has lost 
much, if not all, of its force with an enormously in- 
creased electorate, and a bewildering multiplicity of 
print and speech of all kinds. 

Whatever justice these reasonings may have or 
may lack, the facts speak for themselves, as facts 
intelligently regarded have a habit of doing. The 
first pamphlets proper of great literary merit and 
great political influence are those of Halifax in the 
first movement of real party struggle during the reign 



Introduction xi 

of Charles the Second ; the last which unite the 
same requisites are those of Scott on the eve of the 
first Reform Bill. The leaflet and circular war of 
the anti-Corn Law League must be ruled out as much 
as Mr. Gladstone's Bulgarian Horrors. 

This leaves us a period of almost exactly a hun- 
dred and fifty years, during which the kind, whether 
in good or bad examples, was of constant influence) 
while its best instances enriched literature with per- 
manent masterpieces in little. I do not think that 
any moderately instructed person will find much 
difficulty in comprehending the specimens here given. 
I am sure that no moderately intelligent one will fail, 
with a very little trouble, to take delight in them. I 
do not know whether an artful generaliser could get 
anything out of the circumstances in which the best 
of them grew ; I should say myself that nothing more 
than the system of government, the conditions of the 
electorate and the legislature, and the existence from 
time to time of a superheated state in political feeling, 
can or need be collected. In some respects, to my 
own taste, the first of these examples is also the 
best. To Halifax full justice has never been done, for 
we have had no capable historian of the late seven- 
teenth century but Macaulay, and Halifax's defect of 



xii Introduction 

fervour as a Jacobite was more than made up to 
Macaulay by his defect of fervour as a Williamite. 
As for the moderns, I have myself more than 
once failed to induce editors of ' series ' to give 
Halifax a place. Yet Macaulay himself has been 
fairer to the great Trimmer than to most persons with 
whom he was not in full sympathy. The weakness 
of Halifax's position is indeed obvious. When you 
run first to one side of the boat and then to the 
other, you have ten chances of sinking to one of 
trimming her. To hold fast to one party only, and 
to keep that from extremes, is the only secret, and it 
is no great disgrace to Halifax, that in the very infancy 
of the party and parliamentary system, he did not 
perceive it. But this hardly interferes at all with the 
excellence of his pamphlets. The polished style, the 
admirable sense, the subdued and yet ever present 
wit, the avoidance of excessive cleverness (the one 
thing that the average Briton will not stand), the 
constant eye on the object, are unmistakable. They 
are nearly as forcible as Dryden's political and con- 
troversial prefaces, which are pamphlets themselves 
in their way, and they excel them in knowledge of 
affairs, in urbanity, in adaptation to the special pur- 
pose. In all these points they resemble more than 



Introduction xiii 

anything else the pamphlets of Paul Louis Courier, 
and there can be no higher praise than this. 

No age in English history was more fertile in 
pamphlets than the reigns of William and of Anne. 
Some men of real distinction occasionally contributed 
to them, and others (such as Ferguson and Mayn- 
waring) obtained such literary notoriety as they 
possess by their means. The total volume of the 
kind produced during the quarter of a century be- 
tween the Revolution and the accession of George the 
First would probably fill a considerable library. But 
the examples which really deserve exhumation are 
very few, and I doubt whether any can pretend to 
vie with the masterpieces of Defoe and Swift. Both 
these great writers were accomplished practitioners in 
the art, and the characteristics of both lent them- 
selves with peculiar yet strangely different readiness 
to the work. They addressed, indeed, different 
sections of what was even then the electorate. 
Defoe's unpolished realism and his exact adaptation of 
tone, thought, taste, and fancy to the measure of the 
common Englishman were what chiefly gave him a 
hearing. Swift aimed and flew higher, but also did 
not miss the lower mark. No one has ever doubted 
that Johnson's depreciation of The Conduct of the Allies 



xiv Introduction 

was half special perversity (for he was always unjust 
to Swift), half mere humorous paradox. For there was 
much more of this in the doctor's utterances than his 
admirers, either in his own day or since, have always 
recognised, or have sometimes been qualified by 
Providence to recognise. As for the Drapier's Letters 
I can never myself admire them enough, and they seem 
to me to have been on the whole under- rather than 
over- valued by posterity. 

The ' Great Walpolian Battle ' and the attacks on 
Bute and other favourite ministers were very fertile in 
the pamphlet, but already there were certain signs of 
alteration in its character. Pulteney and Walpole's 
other adversaries had already glimmerings of the 
newspaper proper, that is to say, of the continual 
dropping fire rather than the single heavy broadside ; 
to adopt a better metaphor still, of a regimental and 
professional soldiery rather than of single volunteer 
champions. The Letters of Junius, which for some 
time past have been gradually dropping from their 
former somewhat undue pride of place (gained and 
kept as much by the factitious mystery of their origin 
as by anything else) to a station more justly warranted, 
are no doubt themselves pamphlets of a kind; but 
they are separated from pamphlets proper not less by 



Introduction xv 

their contents than by their form and continuity. 
The real difference is this, that the pamphlet, though 
often if not always personal enough, should always 
and generally does affect at least to discuss a 
general question of principle or policy, whereas 
Junius is always personal first, and very generally 
last also. On the other hand, Burke, whether his 
productions be called Speeches or Letters, Thoughts or 
Reflections, is always a pamphleteer in heart and soul, 
in form and matter. If the resemblance of his pam- 
phlets to speeches gives the force and fire, it is certain 
that the resemblance of his speeches to pamphlets 
accounts for that ' dinner-bell ' effect of his which 
has puzzled some people and shocked others. Burke 
always argued the point, if he only argued one side 
of it, and it is the special as it is the saving grace of 
the pamphlet that it must, or at least should, be an 
argument, and not merely an invective or an in- 
nuendo, a sermon or a lampoon. 

Sydney Smith belonged both to the old school and 
the new. He was both pamphleteer and journalist • 
but he kept the form and even to some extent the 
style of his pamphlets and his articles well apart. I 
may seem likely to have some difficulty in admitting 
the claim of Cobbett after disallowing that of Junius 



xvi Introduction 

under the definition just given, but I have no very great 
fear of being unable to making it good. Much as 
Cobbett disliked persons, and crotchety as he was in 
his dislikes, they were always dislikes of principle in 
the bottom. The singular Tory- Radicalism which 
Cobbett exhibited, and which has made some rank 
him unduly low, was no doubt partly due to accidents 
of birth and education, and to narrowness of intel- 
lectual form. But boroughmongering after all was 
a Whig rather than a Tory institution, and Cobbett's 
hatred of it, as well as that desire for the maintenance 
of a kind of manufacturing yeomanry (not wholly 
different from the later ideal of Mr. William Morris,) 
which was his other guiding principle throughout, 
was by no means alien from pure Toryism. His 
work in relation to Reform, moreover, is unmistakable 
— as unmistakable as is that of Sydney Smith, who pre- 
cedes him here, with regard to Catholic Emancipation. 
I should have voted and written against both these 
things had I lived then ; but this does not make me 
enjoy Cobbett or Sydney any the less. 

As for the latest example I have selected, it is 
a crucial one. The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 
come from a man who is not often rated high as 
a political thinker, even by those who sympathise 



Introduction xvii 

with his political views. But here as elsewhere 
the politician, no less than the poet, the critic, 
the historian, bears the penalty of the pre-eminent 
greatness of the novelist. Nothing is more uncritical 
than to regard Scott as a mere sentimentalist in poli- 
tics, and I cannot think that any competent judge 
can do so after reading Malagrowther, even after 
reading Scott's own Diary and letters on the subject. 
As he there explains, he was not greatly carried, as a 
rule, to interest himself in the details of politics. As 
both Lockhart and he admit, he might not have been 
so interested even at this juncture had it not been 
for the chagrin at his own misfortunes, which, nobly 
and stoically repressed as it was, required some issue. 
But his general principle on this occasion was clear ; 
it can be thoroughly apprehended and appreciated 
even by an Englishman of Englishmen. It was 
thoroughly justified by the event, and, I may perhaps 
be permitted to observe, ran exactly contrary to a 
sentiment rather widely adopted of late. No man, 
whether in public writings or private conduct, could 
be more set than Scott was against a spurious Scotch 
particularism. He even earned from silly Scots 
maledictions for the chivalrous justice he dealt to 
England in The Lord of the Isles, and the common- 



xviii Introduction 

sense justice he dealt to her in the mouth of Bailie 
Jarvie. But he was not more staunch for the 
political Union than he was for the preservation of 
minor institutions, manners, and character ; and the 
proposed interference with Scotch banking seemed to 
him to be one of the things tending to make good 
Scotchmen, as he bluntly told Croker, ' damned mis- 
chievous Englishmen.' Therefore he arose and spoke, 
and though he averted the immediate attempt, yet 
the prophecies which he uttered were amply fulfilled 
in other ways after the Reform Bill. 

These, then, are the principles on which I have 
selected the pieces that follow (some minor reasons for 
the particular choices being given in the special intro- 
ductions) : — That they should be pamphlets proper 
(yMalachi appeared first in a newspaper, but that was 
a sign of the time chiefly, and the numbers of Cobbett's 
Register were practically independent pieces); that they 
should deal with special subjects of burning political, 
and not merely personal, interest; and that they should 
either directly or in the long-run have exercised an 
actual determining influence on the course of politics 
and history. This last point is undoubted in the 
case of the examples from Halifax, Swift, Burke (who 
more than any one man pointed and steeled the 



Introduction xix 

resistance of England to Jacobin tyranny), and Scott ; 
it was less immediate, but scarcely more dubious in 
those of Defoe, Cobbett, and Sydney Smith. And 
so in all humility I make my bow as introducer once 
more to the English public of these Seven Masters 
of English political writing. 



I.— 'LETTER TO A DISSENTER' 

By George Savile, Marquess of Halifax 

{There is no doubt that Halifax's work deserves to 
rank first in a collection of political pamphlets. He signed 
none ; it was indeed almost impossible for a prominent 
person in the State then safely or decently to do so, and 
different attributions were made at the time of some of 
them, as of the Character of a Trimmer to Coventry, and 
of this Letter {this \ masterly little tract,' as Macaulay 
justly calls it) to Temple. But shortly after his 
death all were published as his unchallenged, and there 
never has been any doubt of their authorship in the 
minds oj good judges. Four of them are so good that 
extrinsic reasons have to be brought in for preferring 
one to the other. The Character of a Trimmer is 
rather too long for my scheme ; the Anatomy of an 
Equivalent is too technical, and requires too much 
illustration and exegesis ; the Cautions for Choice of 
Members of Parliament, though practically valuable to 



2 Political Pamphlets 

the present day, is a little too general. The Letter to 
a Dissenter escapes all these objections. It is brief, it 
is thoroughly to the point, it is comprehensible almost 
without note or comment to any one who remembers the 
broad fact that by his Declaration of Indulgence fames 
the Second attempted to detach, and almost succeeded in 
detaching, the Dissenters from their common cause 
with the Church in opposing his enfranchisement of the 
Roman Catholics, and his preferment of them to great 
offices. As for its author, his most eminent acts are 
written in the pages of the universally read historian 
above quoted. But he was in reality more of a Tory 
than it suited Macaulay to represent him, though he 
gloried in the name of Trimmer, and certainly showed 
what is called in modern political slang a ^crossbench mind 1 
not only during the madness of the Popish plot, during 
the greater madness of James's assaults on the Church, 
the Constitution, and private rights, but also {after the 
Revolution) towards William of Orange. Born about 
1630 he died in April 1695, leaving the fame, unjusti- 
fied by any samples in those unreported days, of the 
greatest orator of his time, a reputation as a wit which 
was partly inherited by his grandson, Chesterfield, and 
the I small volume of Miscellanies, on which we here 
draw. The pamphlet itself appeared in April 1687.) 



Letter to a Dissenter 



A LETTER to a DISSENTER, upon occasion 
of His Majesty's late gracious Declara- 
tion of Indulgence 

Sir — Since addresses are in fashion, give me leave 
to make one to you. This is neither the effect of fear, 
interest, or resentment ; therefore you may be sure it 
is sincere : and for that reason it may expect to be 
kindly received. Whether it will have power enough 
to convince, dependeth upon the reasons of which 
you are to judge ; and upon your preparation of mind, 
to be persuaded by truth, whenever it appeareth to 
you. It ought not to be the less welcome for coming 
from a friendly hand, one whose kindness to you is 
not lessened by difference of opinion, and who will 
not let his thoughts for the public be so tied or con- 
fined to this or that sub-division of Protestants as to 
stifle the charity, which besides all other arguments, 
is at this time become necessary to preserve us. 

I am neither surprised nor provoked, to see that 
in the condition you were put into by the laws, and 
the ill circumstances you lay under, by having the 
Exclusion and Rebellion laid to your charge, you were 
desirous to make yourselves less uneasy and obnox- 
ious to authority. Men who are sore, run to the 
nearest remedy with too much haste to consider all 
the consequences : grains of allowance are to be 



4 Political Pamphlets 

given, where nature giveth such strong influences. 
When to men under sufferings it offereth ease, the 
present pain will hardly allow time to examine the 
remedies ; and the strongest reason can hardly gain 
a fair audience from our mind, whilst so possessed, 
till the smart is a little allayed. 

I do not know whether the warmth that naturally 
belongeth to new friendships, may not make it a 
harder task for me to persuade you. It is like telling 
lovers, in the beginning of their joys, that they will 
in a little time have an end. Such an unwelcome 
style doth not easily find credit. But I will suppose 
you are not so far gone in your new passion, but that 
you will hear still ; and therefore I am also under the 
less discouragement, when I offer to your considera- 
tion two things. The first is, the cause you have to 
suspect your new friends. The second, the duty in- 
cumbent upon you, in Christianity and prudence, not 
to hazard the public safety, neither by desire of ease 
nor of revenge. 

To the first. Consider that notwithstanding the 
smooth language which is now put on to engage you, 
these new friends did not make you their choice, but 
their refuge. They have ever made their first court- 
ships to the Church of England, and when they were 
rejected there, they made their application to you in 
the second place. The instances of this might be 
given in all times. I do not repeat them, because 



Letter to a Dissenter 5 

whatsoever is unnecessary must be tedious ; the truth 
of this assertion being so plain as not to admit a 
dispute. You cannot therefore reasonably flatter 
yourselves that there is any inclination to you. They 
never pretended to allow you any quarter, but to 
usher in liberty for themselves under that shelter. I 
refer you to Mr. Coleman's Letters, and to the Journals 
of Parliament, where you may be convinced, if you 
can be so mistaken as to doubt ; nay, at this very 
hour they can hardly forbear, in the height of their 
courtship, to let fall hard words of you. So little is 
nature to be restrained ; it will start out sometimes, 
disdaining to submit to the usurpation of art and 
interest. 

This alliance, between liberty and infallibility, is 
bringing together the two most contrary things that 
are in the world. The Church of Rome doth not 
only dislike the allowing liberty, but by its prin- 
ciples it cannot do it. Wine is not more expressly 
forbid to the Mahometans, than giving heretics 
liberty to the Papists. They are no more able to 
make good their vows to you, than men married 
before, and their wife alive, can confirm their contract 
with another. The continuance of their kindness 
would be a habit of sin, of which they are to repent ; 
and their absolution is to be had upon no other terms 
than their promise to destroy you. You are therefore 
to be hugged now, only that you may be the better 



6 Political Pamphlets 

squeezed at another time. There must be something 
extraordinary when the Church of Rome setteth up 
bills, and offereth plaisters, for tender consciences. 
By all that hath hitherto appeared, her skill in 
chirurgery lieth chiefly in a quick hand to cut off 
limbs ; but fshe is the worst at healing of any that 
ever pretended to it. 

To come so quick from another extreme is such 
an unnatural motion that you ought to be upon your 
guard. The other day you were Sons of Belial ; now 
you are Angels of Light. This is a violent change, 
and it will be fit for you to pause upon it before you 
believe it. If your features are not altered, neither 
is their opinion of you, whatever may be pretended. 
Do you believe less than you did that there is idolatry 
in the Church of Rome ? Sure you do not. See, 
then, how they treat, both in words and writing, those 
who entertain that opinion. Conclude from hence, 
how inconsistent their favour is with this single article, 
except they give you a dispensation for this too, and 
not by a non obstante, secure you that they will not 
think the worse of you. 

Think a little how dangerous it is to build upon a 
foundation of paradoxes. Popery now is the only 
friend to liberty, and the known enemy to persecu- 
tion. The men of Taunton and Tiverton are above 
all other eminent for Loyalty. The Quakers, from 
being declared by the Papists not to be Christians, 



Letter to a Dissenter 7 

are now made favourites, and taken into their parti- 
cular protection ; they are on a sudden grown the 
most accomplished men of the kingdom in good 
breeding, and give thanks with the best grace in 
double -refined language. So that I should not 
wonder, though a man of that persuasion, in spite of 
his hat, should be Master of the Ceremonies. Not 
to say harsher words, these are such very new things, 
that it is impossible not to suspend our belief, till by 
a little more experience, we may be informed whether 
they are realities or apparitions. We have been 
under shameful mistakes, if these opinions are true ; 
but for the present we are apt to be incredulous, 
except that we could be convinced that the priest's 
words in this case too are able to make such a 
sudden and effectual change ; and that their power is 
not limited to the Sacrament, but that it extendeth to 
alter the nature of all other things, as often as they 
are so disposed. 

Let me now speak of the instruments of your 
friendship, and then leave you to judge whether they 
do not afford matter of suspicion. No sharpness is 
to be mingled, where healing only is intended ; so 
nothing will be said to expose particular men, how 
strong soever the temptation may be, or how clear 
the proofs to make it out. A word or two in general, 
for your better caution, shall suffice. Suppose then, 
for argument's sake, that the mediators of this new 



8 Political Pamphlets 

alliance should be such as have been formerly em- 
ployed in treaties of the same kind, and there detected 
to have acted by order, and to have been empowered 
to give encouragements and rewards. Would not 
this be an argument to suspect them ? 

If they should plainly be under engagements to 
one side, their arguments to the other ought to be 
received accordingly. Their fair pretences are to be 
looked upon as a part of their commission, which 
may not improbably give them a dispensation in the 
case of truth, when it may bring a prejudice upon the 
service of those by whom they are employed. 

If there should be men, who having formerly had 
means and authority to persuade by secular argu- 
ments, have, in pursuance of that power, sprinkled 
money among the Dissenting ministers ; and if those 
very men should now have the same authority, 
practise the same methods, and disburse where they 
cannot otherwise persuade; it seemeth to me to be 
rather an evidence than a presumption of the deceit. 

If there should be ministers amongst you, who by 
having fallen under temptations of this kind, are in 
some sort engaged to continue their frailty, by the 
awe they are in lest it should be exposed ; the per- 
suasions of these unfortunate men must sure have 
the less force, and their arguments, though never so 
specious, are to be suspected, when they come from 
men who have mortgaged themselves to severe 



Letter to a Dissenter 9 

creditors, that expect a rigorous observance of the 
contract, let it be never so unwarrantable. If these, 
or any others, should at this time preach up anger 
and vengeance against the Church of England ; may 
it not without injustice be suspected that a thing so 
plainly out of season springeth rather from corruption 
than mistake ; and that those who act this choleric 
part, do not believe themselves, but only pursue 
higher directions, and endeavour to make good that 
part of their contract, which obligeth them, upon a 
forfeiture, to make use of their enflaming eloquence ? 
They might apprehend their wages would be re- 
trenched if they should be moderate : and therefore, 
whilst violence is their interest, those who have not 
the same arguments have no reason to follow such a 
partial example. 

If there should be men, who by the load of their 
crimes against the Government, have been bowed 
down to comply with it against their conscience ; 
who by incurring the want of a pardon, have drawn 
upon themselves a necessity of an entire resignation, 
such men are to be lamented, but not to be believed. 
Nay, they themselves, when they have discharged 
their unwelcome talk, will be inwardly glad that their 
forced endeavours do not succeed, and are pleased 
when men resist their insinuations ; which are far 
from being voluntary or sincere, but are squeezed out 
of them by the weight of their being so obnoxious. 



io Political Pamphlets 

If, in the height of this great clearness, by compar- 
ing things, it should happen that at this instant there 
is much a surer friendship with those who are so far 
from allowing liberty that they allow no living to a 
Protestant under them — let the scene lie in what 
part of the world it will, the argument will come 
home, and sure it will afford sufficient ground to 
suspect. Apparent contradictions must strike us ; 
neither nature nor reason can digest them. Self- 
flattery, and the desire to deceive ourselves, to gratify 
present appetite, with all their power, which is great, 
cannot get the better of such broad conviction, as 
some things carry along with them. Will you call 
these vain and empty suspicions? Have you been 
at all times so void of fears and jealousies, as to 
justify your being so unreasonably valiant in having 
none upon this occasion? Such an extraordinary 
courage at this unseasonable time, to say no more, is 
too dangerous a virtue to be commended. 

If then, for these and a thousand other reasons, 
there is cause to suspect, sure your new friends are 
not to dictate to you, or advise you. For instance : 
the Addresses that fly abroad every week, and murder 
us with another to the same; the first draughts are 
made by those who are not very proper to be secre- 
taries to the Protestant Religion : and it is your part 
only to write them out fairer again. 

Strange ! that you, who have been formerly so 



Letter to a Dissenter u 

much against set forms^ should now be content the 
priests should indite for you. The nature of thanks 
is an unavoidable consequence of being pleased or 
obliged ; they grow in the heart, and from thence 
show themselves either in looks, speech, writing, or 
action. No man was ever thankful because he was 
bid to be so, but because he had, or thought he had 
some reason for it. If then there is cause in this 
case to pay such extravagant acknowledgments, they 
will flow naturally, without taking such pains to pro- 
cure them ■ and it is unkindly done to tire all the 
Post-horses with carrying circular letters, to solicit that 
which would be done without any trouble or con- 
straint. If it is really in itself such a favour, what 
needeth so much pressing men to be thankful, and 
with such eager circumstances, that where persuasions 
cannot delude, threatenings are employed to fright 
them into a compliance ? Thanks must be voluntary, 
not only unconstrained but unsolicited, else they are 
either trifles or snares, that either signify nothing or 
a great deal more than is intended by those that give 
them. If an inference should be made, that whoso- 
ever thanketh the King for his Declaration, is by that 
engaged to justify it in point of law ; it is a greater 
stride than I presume all those care to make who are 
persuaded to address. It shall be supposed that all 
the thankers will be repealers of the Test, whenever 
a Parliament shall meet ; such an expectation is better 



12 Political Pamphlets 

prevented before than disappointed afterwards; and 
the surest way to avoid the lying under such a 
scandal is not to do anything that may give a 
colour to the mistake. These bespoken thanks are 
little less improper than love-letters that were solicited 
by the lady to whom they are to be directed : so 
that, besides the little ground there is to give them, 
the manner of getting them doth extremely lessen 
their value. It might be wished that you would have 
suppressed your |impatience, and have been content, 
for the sake of religion, to enjoy it within yourselves, 
without the liberty of a public exercise, till a Parlia- 
ment had allowed it; but since that could not be, 
and that the articles of some amongst you have made 
use of the well-meant zeal of the generality to draw 
them into this mistake, I am so far from blaming 
you with that sharpness, which perhaps the matter in 
strictness would bear, that I am ready to err on the 
side of the more gentle construction. 

There is a great difference between enjoying quietly 
the advantages of an act irregularly done by others, 
and the going about to support it against the laws in 
being. The law is so sacred that no trespass against 
it is to be defended ; yet frailties may in some measure 
be excused when they cannot be justified. The 
desire of enjoying liberty, from which men have been 
so long restrained, may be a temptation that their 
reason is not at all times able to resist. If in such a 



Letter to a Dissenter 13 

case some objections are leapt over, indifferent men 
will be more inclined to lament the occasion than to 
fall too hard upon the fault, whilst it is covered with 
the apology of a good intention. But where, to 
rescue yourselves from the severity of one law, you 
give a blow to all the laws, by which your religion 
and liberty are to be protected ; and instead of 
silently receiving the benefit of this indulgence, you 
set up for advocates to support it, you become volun- 
tary aggressors, and look like counsel retained by the 
prerogative against your old friend Magna Charta, 
who hath done nothing to deserve her falling thus 
under your displeasure. 

If the case then should be, that the price expected 
from you for this liberty is giving up your right in 
the laws, sure you will think twice before you go any 
farther in such a losing bargain. After giving thanks 
for the breach of one law, you lose the right of com- 
plaining of the breach of all the rest ; you will not 
very well know how to defend yourselves when you 
are pressed ; and having given up the question when 
it was for your advantage, you cannot recall it when 
it shall be to your prejudice. If you will set up at 
one time a power to help you, which at another time, 
by parity of reason, shall be made use of to destroy 
you, you will neither be pitied nor relieved against 
a mischief which you draw upon yourselves by 
being so unreasonably thankful. It is like calling in 



14 Political Pamphlets 

auxiliaries to help, who are strong enough to subdue 
you. In such a case your complaints will come too 
late to be heard, and your sufferings will raise mirth 
instead of compassion. 

If you think, for your excuse, to expound your 
thanks, so as to restrain them to this particular case ; 
others, for their ends, will extend them further : and 
in these differing interpretations, that which is backed 
by authority will be the most likely to prevail ; especi- 
ally when, by the advantage you have given them, 
they have in truth the better of the argument, and 
that the inferences from your own concessions are 
very strong and express against you. This is so far 
from being a groundless supposition, that there was a 
late instance of it in the last session of Parliament, in 
the House of Lords, where the first thanks, though 
things of course, were interpreted to be the approba- 
tion of the King's whole speech, and a restraint from 
the further examination of any part of it, though never 
so much disliked ; and it was with difficulty obtained, 
not to be excluded from the liberty of objecting to this 
mighty prerogative of dispensing, merely by this inno- 
cent and usual piece of good manners, by which no 
such thing could possibly be intended. 

This showeth that some bounds are to be put to 
your good breeding, and that the Constitution of 
England is too valuable a thing to be ventured upon 
a compliment. Now that you have for some time 



Letter to a Dissenter 15 

enjoyed the benefit of the end, it is time for you to 
look into the danger of the means. The same reason 
that made you desirous to get liberty must make you 
solicitous to preserve it, so that the next thought will 
naturally be, not to engage yourself beyond retreat ; 
and to agree so far with the principles of all religion, 
as not to rely upon a death-bed repentance. 

There are certain periods of time, which being 
once past, make all cautions ineffectual, and all 
remedies desperate. Our understandings are apt to 
be hurried on by the first heats, which, if not restrained 
in time, do not give us leave to look back till it is 
too late. Consider this in the case of your anger 
against the Church of England, and take warning by 
their mistake in the same kind, when after the late 
King's Restoration they preserved so long the bitter 
taste of your rough usage to them in other times, that 
it made them forget their interest and sacrifice it to 
their revenge. 

Either you will blame this proceeding in them, and 
for that reason not follow it ; or, if you allow it, you 
have no reason to be offended with them ; so that 
you must either dismiss your anger or lose your 
excuse ; except you should argue more partially than 
will be supposed of men of your morality and under- 
standing. 

If you had now to do with those rigid prelates 
who made it a matter of conscience to give you the 



6 Political Pamphlets 

least indulgence, but kept you at an uncharitable 
distance, and even to your most reasonable scruples 
continued stiff and inexorable, the argument might be 
fairer on your side; but since the common danger 
has so laid open that mistake, that all the former 
haughtiness towards you is for ever extinguished, and 
that it hath turned the spirit of persecution into a 
spirit of peace, charity, and condescension ; shall 
this happy change only affect the Church of England ? 
And are you so in love with separation as not to be 
moved by this example? It ought to be followed, 
were there no other reason than that it is virtue ; but 
when, besides that, it is become necessary to your 
preservation, it is impossible to fail the having its 
effect upon you. 

If it should be said that the Church of England 
is never humble but when she is out of power, and 
therefore loseth the right of being believed when she 
pretendeth to it : the answer is, first, It would be an 
uncharitable objection, and very much mistimed ; an 
unseasonable triumph, not only ungenerous but un- 
safe : so that in these respects it cannot be urged 
without scandal, even though it could be said with 
truth. Secondly, This is not so in fact, and the argu- 
ment must fall, being built upon a false foundation ; 
for whatever may be told you at this very hour, and 
in the heat and glare of your perfect sunshine, the 
Church of England can in a moment bring clouds 



Letter to a Dissenter 17 

again, and turn the royal thunder upon your heads, 
blow you off the stage with a breath, if she would 
give but a smile or a kind word ; the least glimpse of 
her compliance would throw you back into the state 
of suffering, and draw upon you all the arrears of 
severity which have accrued during the time of this 
kindness to you ; and yet the Church of England, 
with all her faults, will not allow herself to be rescued 
by such unjustifiable means, but chooseth to bear the 
weight of power rather than lie under the burden of 
being criminal. 

It cannot be said that she is unprovoked : books 
and letters come out every day to call for answers, 
yet she will not be stirred. From the supposed 
authors and the style, one would swear they were 
undertakers, and had made a contract to fall out with 
the Church of England. There are lashes in every 
address, challenges to draw the pen in every pamph- 
let. In short, the fairest occasions in the world 
given to quarrel ; but she wisely distinguisheth between 
the body of Dissenters, whom she will suppose to act, 
as they do, with no ill intent, and these small skir- 
mishers, picked and sent out to piqueer, and to 
begin a fray amongst the Protestants for the enter- 
tainment as well as the advantage of the Church 
of Rome. 

This conduct is so good, that it will be scandalous 
not to applaud it. It is not equal dealing to blame 

c 



1 8 Political Pamphlets 

our adversaries for doing ill, and not commend them 
when they do well. 

To hate them because they are persecuted, and 
not to be reconciled to them when they are ready to 
suffer rather than receive all the advantages that can 
be gained by a criminal compliance, is a principle no 
sort of Christians can own, since it would give an 
objection to them never to be answered. 

Think a little who they were that promoted your 
former persecutions, and then consider how it will 
look to be angry with the instruments, and at the 
same time to make a league with the authors of your 
sufferings. 

Have you enough considered what will be expected 
from you ? Are you ready to stand in every borough 
by virtue of a conge d u elire, and instead of election 
be satisfied if you are returned ? 

Will you, in parliament, justify the dispensing 
power, with all its consequences, and repeal the test, 
by which you will make way for the repeal of all the 
laws that were made to preserve your religion, and to 
enact others that shall destroy it ? 

Are you disposed to change the liberty of debate 
into the merit of obedience ; and to be made instru- 
ments to repeal or enact laws, when the Roman Con- 
sistory are Lords of the Articles ? 

Are you so linked to your new friends as to reject 
any indulgence a parliament shall offer you, if it shall 



Letter to a Dissenter 19 

not be so comprehensive as to include the Papists 
in it? 

Consider that the implied conditions of your new- 
treaty are no less than that you are to do everything 
you are desired, without examining ; and that for this 
pretended liberty of conscience, your real freedom is 
to be sacrificed ; your former faults hang like chains 
still about you, you are let loose only upon bail; 
the first act of non-compliance sendeth you to gaol 
again. 

You may see that the Papists themselves do not 
rely upon the legality of this power which you are to 
justify, since the being so very earnest to get it estab- 
lished by a law, and the doing such very hard things 
in order, as they think, to obtain it, is a clear evidence 
that they do not think that the single power of the 
Crown is in this case a good foundation ; especially 
when this is done under a prince so very tender of 
the rights of sovereignty that he would think it a 
diminution to his prerogative, where he conceiveth it 
strong enough to go alone, to call in the legislative 
help to strengthen and support it. 

You have formerly blamed the Church of England, 
and not without reason, for going so far as they did 
in their compliance ; and yet so soon as they stopped, 
you see they are not only deserted, but prosecuted. 
Conclude, then, from this example, that you must 
either break off your friendship or resolve to have no 



20 Political Pamphlets 

bounds in it. If they do succeed in their design, 
they will leave you first : if they do, you must either 
leave them, when it will be too late for your safety, 
or else, after the squeaziness of starting at a surplice, 
you must be forced to swallow Transubstantiation. 

Remember that the other day those of the Church 
of England were Trimmers for enduring you ; and 
now, by a sudden turn, you are become the favourites. 
Do not deceive yourselves \ it is not the nature of 
lasting plants thus to shoot up in a night ; you may 
look gay and green for a little time, but you want a 
root to give you a continuance. It is not so long 
since, as to be forgotten, that the maxim was, It is 
impossible for a Dissenter not to be a Rebel. Con- 
sider at this time in France, even the new converts 
are so far from being employed that they are dis- 
armed ; their sudden change maketh them still to be 
distrusted, notwithstanding that they are reconciled ; 
what are you to expect then from your dear friends, 
to whom, whenever they shall think fit to throw you 
off again, you have in other times given such argu- 
ments for their excuse ? 

Besides all this you act very unskilfully against 
your visible interest, if you throw away the advantages 
of which you can hardly fail in the next probable 
Revolution. Things tend naturally to what you 
would have, if you would let them alone, and not by 
an unseasonable activity lose the influences of your 



Letter to a Dissenter 21 

good star, which promiseth you everything that is 
prosperous. 

The Church of England, convinced of its error in 
being severe to you ; the Parliament, whenever it 
meeteth sure to be gentle to you ; the next heir, bred 
in the country which you have so often quoted for a 
pattern of indulgence; a general agreement of all 
thinking men, that we must no more cut ourselves off 
from the Protestants abroad, but rather enlarge the 
foundations upon which we are to build our defences 
against the common enemy ; so that in truth, all 
things seem to conspire to give you ease and satis- 
faction, if by too much haste to anticipate your good 
fortune you do not destroy it. 

The Protestants have but one article of human 
strength to oppose the power which is now against 
them, and that is not to lose the advantage of their 
numbers by being so unwary as to let themselves be 
divided. 

We all agree in our duty to our prince; our 
objections to his belief do not hinder us from seeing 
his virtues ; and our not complying with his religion 
hath no effect upon our allegiance. We are not to 
be laughed out of our passive obedience, and the 
doctrine of non-resistance, though even those who 
perhaps owe the best part of their security to that 
principle are apt to make a jest of it. 

So that if we give no advantage by the fatal 



22 Political Pamphlets 

mistake of misapplying our anger, by the natural 
course of things! this danger will pass away like a 
shower of hail ; fair weather will succeed, as lowering 
as the sky now looketh, and all this by a plain and 
easy receipt. Let us be still, quiet, and undivided, 
firm at the same time to our religion, our loyalty, and 
our laws ; and so long as we continue this method it 
is next to impossible that the odds of two hundred 
to one should lose the bet ; except the Church of 
Rome, which hath been so long barren of miracles, 
should now, in her declining age, be brought to bed 
of one that would outdo the best she can brag of in 
her legend. 

To conclude, the short question will be, Whether 
you will join with those who must in the end run the 
same fate with you? If Protestants of all sorts, in 
their behaviour to one another, have been to blame, 
they are upon more equal terms, and, for that very 
reason, it is fitter for them now to be reconciled. Our 
disunion is not only a reproach, but a danger to us. 
Those who believe in modern miracles have more 
right, or at least more excuse, to neglect all secular 
caution ; but for us, it is as justifiable to have no 
religion as wilfully to throw away the human means 
of preserving it. — I am, Dear Sir, your most affection- 
ate humble Servant, T. W. 



II.— 'THE SHORTEST WAY WITH THE 
DISSENTERS ' 

By Daniel Defoe 

(Defoe wrote an enormous number of pamphlets ; 
for great part of his life he might almost have been 
described as a pamphleteer pure and simple. In the 
vast lists of publications which his biographers and 
bibliographers have compiled, partly by industry and 
partly by imagination, by far the larger number of 
entries is of the pamphlet kind. Indeed, as most people 
know, Defoe did not take to the composition of the 
fiction which has made his name famous till very late 
in life. Born in the year 1661, he began pamphlet- 
eering when he was scarcely of age, and continued in that 
way (with occasional excursions into work larger in 
scale, but not very different in style or matter) for nearly 
forty years before the publication of Robinson Crusoe. 
His two most famous and most effective pamphlets 
were the so-called Legion Letter and The Shortest 
Way with the Dissenters (given here), to which may 
perhaps be added the Reasons against War with France. 
All these, with many others, appeared within the compass 



24 Political Pamphlets 

of the years 170 0-1702. The three together touched 
upon the three most burning questions of the late seven- 
teenth and early eighteenth centuries — parliamentary 
factiousness ; an aggressive policy abroad ', and toleration 
at home. Little or no annotation is required for their 
comprehension, but the reader 7nay amuse himself if he 
likes by meditating whether the Shortest Way is irony 
or not. My own opinion is that it is not ; being a 
simple statement of the actual views of the other side. 
The anecdotic history of the piece — how it was taken for 
serious by both sides, was prosecuted by Government, 
the author proclaimed, and a reward offered for his 
detection ; how, the printer and publisher being arrested, 
Defoe surrendered, was tried, pleaded guilty, was fined, 
pilloried, and imprisoned — may be read in the biogra- 
phies. His imprisonment lasted till August 1704, when 
Harley let him out, and he entered upon a course of 
rather mysterious service as a Government free-lance, 
which was continued under various ministries, and has 
not on the whole brought him credit with posterity. 
For many years, his remarkable Review, a political 
journal which he conducted single-handed, served as his 
chief organ ; but he never gave up writing pamphlets 
till his death in 1 73 1, though he never approached either 
the merit or the effect of that here given.) 

Sir Roger L'Estrange tells us a story in his collec- 
tion of fables, of the cock and the horses. The cock 



The Shortest Way with the Dissenters 25 

was gotten to roost in the stable among the horses, 
and there being no racks or other conveniences for 
him, it seems he was forced to roost upon the ground. 
The horses jostling about for room, and putting the 
cock in danger of his life, he gives them this grave 
advice, 'Pray, gentlefolks, let us stand still, for fear 
we should tread upon one another.' 

There are some people in the world, who now 
they are unperched, and reduced to an equality with 
other people, and under strong and very just appre- 
hensions of being further treated as they deserve, 
begin, with iEsop's cock, to preach up peace and 
union, and the Christian duties of moderation, for- 
getting that, when they had the power in their hands, 
these graces were strangers in their gates. 

It is now near fourteen years that the glory and 
peace of the purest and most flourishing Church in 
the world has been eclipsed, buffeted, and disturbed 
by a sort of men whom God in His providence has 
suffered to insult over her and bring her down. 
These have been the days of her humiliation and 
tribulation. She has borne with invincible patience 
the reproach of the wicked, and God has at last 
heard her prayers, and delivered her from the op- 
pression of the stranger. 

And now they find their day is over, their power 
gone, and the throne of this nation possessed by a 
royal, English, true, and ever-constant member of, and 



26 Political Pamphlets 

friend to, the Church of England. Now they find that 
they are in danger of the Church of England's just 
resentments ; now they cry out peace, union, forbear- 
ance, and charity, as if the Church had not too long 
harboured her enemies under her wing, and nourished 
the viperous brood till they hiss and fly in the face of 
the mother that cherished them. 

No, gentlemen, the time of mercy is past, your 
day of grace is over; you should have practised 
peace, and moderation, and charity, if you expected 
any yourselves. 

We have heard none of this lesson for fourteen 
years past. We have been huffed and bullied with 
your Act of Toleration; you have told us that you 
are the Church established by law, as well as others ; 
have set up your canting synagogues at our church 
doors, and the Church and members have been loaded 
with reproaches, with oaths, associations, abjurations, 
and what not. Where has been the mercy, the for- 
bearance, the charity, you have shown to tender con- 
sciences of the Church of England, that could not 
take oaths as fast as you made them ; that having 
sworn allegiance to their lawful and rightful King, 
could not dispense with that oath, their King being 
still alive, and swear to your new hodge-podge of a 
Dutch Government? These have been turned out 
of their livings, and they and their families left to 
starve ; their estates double taxed to carry on a war 



The Shortest Way with the Dissenters 27 

they had no hand in, and you got nothing by. What 
account can you give of the multitudes you have 
forced to comply, against their consciences, with your 
new sophistical politics, who, like new converts in 
France, sin because they cannot starve? And now 
the tables are turned upon you ; you must not be 
persecuted ; it is not a Christian spirit. 

You have butchered one king, deposed another 
king, and made a mock king of a third, and yet you 
could have the face to expect to be employed and 
trusted by the fourth. Anybody that did not know 
the temper of your party would stand amazed at the 
impudence, as well as folly, to think of it. 

Your management of your Dutch monarch, whom 
you reduced to a mere King of Clouts, is enough to 
give any future princes such an idea of your principles 
as to warn them sufficiently from coming into your 
clutches; and God be thanked the Queen is out 
of your hands, knows you, and will have a care 
of you. 

There is no doubt but the supreme authority of a 
nation has in itself a power, and a right to that power, 
to execute the laws upon any part of that nation it 
governs. The execution of the known laws of the 
land, and that with a weak and gentle hand neither, 
was all this fanatical party of this land have ever 
called persecution ; this they have magnified to a 
height, that the sufferings of the Huguenots in France 



28 Political Pamphlets 

were not to be compared with. Now, to execute the 
known laws of a nation upon those who transgress 
them, after voluntarily consenting to the making those 
laws, can never be called persecution, but justice. 
But justice is always violence to the party offending, 
for every man is innocent in his own eyes. The first 
execution of the laws against Dissenters in England 
was in the days of King James the First ; and what 
did it amount to truly ? The worst they suffered was 
at their own request : to let them go to New England 
and erect a new colony, and give them great privi- 
leges, grants, and suitable powers, keep them under 
protection, and defend them against all invaders, and 
receive no taxes or revenue from them. This was the 
cruelty of the Church of England. Fatal leniency ! 
It was the ruin of that excellent prince, King Charles 
the First. Had King James sent all the Puritans in 
England away to the West Indies, we had been a 
national, unmixed Church; the Church of England 
had been kept undivided and entire. 

To requite the lenity of the father they take up 
arms against the son ; conquer, pursue, take, imprison, 
and at last put to death the anointed of God, and 
destroy the very being and nature of government, 
setting up a sordid impostor, who had neither title to 
govern nor understanding to manage, but supplied 
that want with power, bloody and desperate counsels, 
and craft without conscience. 



The Shortest Way with the Dissenters 29 

Had not King James the First withheld the full 
execution of the laws, had he given them strict 
justice, he had cleared the nation of them, and the 
consequences had been plain : his son had never been 
murdered by them nor the monarchy overwhelmed. 
It was too much mercy shown them was the ruin of 
his posterity and the ruin of the nation's peace. One 
would think the Dissenters should not have the face 
to believe that we are to be wheedled and canted into 
peace and toleration when they know that they have once 
requited us with a civil war, and once with an intoler- 
able and unrighteous persecution for our former civility. 

Nay, to encourage us to be easy with them, it is 
apparent that they never had the upper hand of the 
Church, but they treated her with all the severity, 
with all the reproach and contempt that was possible. 
What peace and what mercy did they show the loyal 
gentry of the Church of England in the time of their 
triumphant Commonwealth ? How did they put all 
the gentry of England to ransom, whether they were 
actually in arms for the King or not, making people 
compound for their estates and starve their families ? 
How did they treat the clergy of the Church of Eng- 
land, sequestered the ministers, devoured the patri- 
mony of the Church, and divided the spoil by sharing 
the Church lands among their soldiers, and turning 
her clergy out to starve ? Just such measure as they 
have meted should be measured them again. 



30 Political Pamphlets 

Charity and love is the known doctrine of the 
Church of England, and it is plain she has put it in 
practice towards the Dissenters, even beyond what 
they ought, till she has been wanting to herself, and 
in effect unkind to her sons, particularly in the too 
much lenity of King James the First, mentioned 
before. Had he so rooted the Puritans from the 
face of the land, which he had an opportunity early 
to have done, they had not had the power to vex the 
Church as since they have done. 

In the days of King Charles the Second how did 
the Church reward their bloody doings with lenity 
and mercy, except the barbarous regicides of the pre- 
tended court of justice ? Not a soul suffered for all 
the blood in an unnatural war. King Charles came 
in all mercy and love, cherished them, preferred them, 
employed them, withheld the rigour of the law, and 
oftentimes, even against the advice of his Parliament, 
gave them liberty of conscience ; and how did they 
requite him with the villanous contrivance to depose 
and murder him and his successor at the Rye Plot ? 

King James, as if mercy was the inherent quality 
of the family, began his reign with unusual favour 
to them. Nor could their joining with the Duke 
of Monmouth against him move him to do him- 
self justice upon them ; but that mistaken prince 
thought to win them by gentleness and love, pro- 
claimed an universal liberty to them, and rather 



The Shortest Way with the Dissenters 31 

discountenanced the Church of England than them. 
How they requited him all the world knows. 

The late reign is too fresh in the memory of all 
the world to need a comment \ how, under pretence 
of joining with the Church in redressing some griev- 
ances, they pushed things to that extremity, in con- 
junction with some mistaken gentlemen, as to depose 
the late King, as if the grievance of the nation could 
not have been redressed but by the absolute ruin of 
the prince. Here is an instance of their temper, 
their peace, and charity. To what height they 
carried themselves during the reign of a king of their 
own ; how they crept into all places of trust and 
profit ; how they insinuated into the favour of the 
King, and were at first preferred to the highest places 
in the nation ; how they engrossed the ministry, and 
above all, how pitifully they managed, is too plain to 
need any remarks. 

But particularly their mercy and charity, the spirit 
of union, they tell us so much of, has been remarkable 
in Scotland. If any man would see the spirit of a 
Dissenter, let him look into Scotland. There they 
made entire conquest of the Church, trampled down 
the sacred orders, and suppressed the Episcopal 
government with an absolute, and, as they suppose, 
irretrievable victory, though it is possible they may 
find themselves mistaken. Now it would be a very 
proper question to ask their impudent advocate, the 



32 Political Pamphlets 

Observator, pray how much mercy and favour did the 
members of the Episcopal Church find in Scotland 
from the Scotch Presbyterian Government? and I 
shall undertake for the Church of England that the 
Dissenters shall still receive as much here, though 
they deserve but little. 

In a small treatise of the sufferings of the Epis- 
copal clergy in Scotland, it will appear what usage 
they met with ; how they not only lost their livings, 
but in several places were plundered and abused in 
their persons ; the ministers that could not conform 
turned out with numerous families and no mainten- 
ance, and hardly charity enough left to relieve them 
with a bit of bread. And the cruelties of the parties 
are innumerable, and not to be attempted in this 
short piece. 

And now to prevent the distant cloud which they 
perceived to hang over their heads from England, 
with a true Presbyterian policy they put in for a 
union of nations, that England might unite their 
Church with the Kirk of Scotland, and their Presby- 
terian members sit in our House of Commons, and 
their Assembly of Scotch canting long-cloaks in our 
Convocation. What might have been if our fanatic 
Whiggish statesmen continued, God only knows ; but 
we hope we are out of fear of that now. 

It is alleged by some of the faction — and they 
began to bully us with it — that if we won't unite with 



The Shortest Way with the Dissenters 33 

them they will not settle the crown with us again, 
but when Her Majesty dies, will choose a king for 
themselves. 

If they won't, we must make them, and it is not 
the first time we have let them know that we are able. 
The crowns of these kingdoms have not so far dis- 
owned the right of succession but they may retrieve 
it again ; and if Scotland thinks to come off from a 
successive to an elective state of government, England 
has not promised not to assist the right heir and put 
them into possession without any regard to their 
ridiculous settlements. 

These are the gentlemen, these their ways of 
treating the Church, both at home and abroad. 
Now let us examine the reasons they pretend to 
give why we should be favourable to them, why we 
should continue and tolerate them among us. 

First, they are very numerous, they say ; they are 
a great part of the nation, and we cannot suppress 
them. 

To this may be; answered : — 

1. They are not so numerous as the Protestants 
in France, and yet the French King effectually cleared 
the nation of them at once, and we don't find he 
misses them at home. But I am not of the opinion 
they are so numerous as is pretended ; their party is 
more numerous than their persons, and those mistaken 
people of the Church who are misled and deluded by 

D 



34 Political Pamphlets 

their wheedling artifices to join with them, make their 
party the greater ; but these will open their eyes when 
the Government shall set heartily about the work, and 
come off from them, as some animals, which they say 
always desert a house when it is likely to fall. 

2. The more numerous the more dangerous, and 
therefore the more need to suppress them ; and God 
has suffered us to bear them as goads in our sides for 
not utterly extinguishing them long ago. 

3. If we are to allow them only because we cannot 
suppress them, then it ought to be tried whether we 
can or not ; and I am of opinion it is easy to be done, 
and could prescribe ways and means, if it were proper ; 
but I doubt not the Government will find effectual 
methods for the rooting the contagion from the face 
of this land. 

Another argument they use, which is this, that it 
is a time of war, and we have need to unite against 
the common enemy. 

We answer, this common enemy had been no 
enemy if they had not made him so. He was quiet, 
in peace, and no way disturbed or encroached upon 
us, and we know no reason we had to quarrel with 
him. 

But further, we make no question but we are able 
to deal with this common enemy without their help ; 
but why must we unite with them because of the 
enemy t ? Will they go over to the enemy if we do 



TJie Shortest Way with the Dissenters 35 

not prevent it by a union with them ? We are very 
well contented they should, and make no question 
we shall be ready to deal with them and the common 
enemy too, and better without them than with them. 

Besides, if we have a common enemy, there is the 
more need to be secure against our private enemies. 
If there is one common enemy, we have the less need 
to have an enemy in our bowels. 

It was a great argument some people used against 
suppressing the old money, that it was a time of war, 
and it was too great a risk for the nation to run ; if 
we should not master it, we should be undone. And 
yet the sequel proved the hazard was not so great but 
it might be mastered, and the success was answerable. 
The suppressing the Dissenters is not a harder work 
nor a work of less necessity to the public. We can 
never enjoy a settled, uninterrupted union and tran- 
quillity in this nation till the spirit of Whiggism, 
faction, and schism is melted down like the old 
money. 

To talk of the difficulty is to frighten ourselves 
with chimeras and notions of a powerful party, which 
are indeed a party without power. Difficulties often 
appear greater at a distance than when they are 
searched into with judgment and distinguished from 
the vapours and shadows that attend them. 

We are not to be frightened with it ; this age is 
wiser than that by all our own experience and theirs 



36 Political Pamphlets 

too. King Charles the First had early suppressed 
this party if he had taken more deliberate measures. 
In short, it is not worth arguing to talk of their arms. 
Their Monmouths, and Shaftesburys, and Argyles are 
gone ; their Dutch sanctuary is at an end ; Heaven 
has made way for their destruction, and if we do not 
close with the Divine occasion we are to blame our- 
selves, and may remember that we had once an 
opportunity to serve the Church of England by 
extirpating her implacable enemies, and having let 
slip the minute that Heaven presented, may experi- 
mentally complain, Post est occasio calva. 

Here are some popular objections in the way : — 
As first, the Queen has promised them to continue 
them in their tolerated liberty, and has told us she 
will be a religious observer of her word. 

What Her Majesty will do we cannot help ; but 
what, as head of the Church, she ought to do, is 
another case. Her Majesty has promised to protect 
and defend the Church of England, and if she cannot 
effectually do that without the destruction of the Dis- 
senters, she must of course dispense with one promise 
to comply with another. But to answer this cavil 
more effectually : Her Majesty did never promise to 
maintain the toleration to the destruction of the 
Church; but it is upon supposition that it may be 
compatible with the well-being and safety of the 
Church, which she had declared she would take 



The Shortest Way with the Dissenters 37 

especial care of. Now if these two interests clash, 
it is plain Her Majesty's intentions are to uphold, 
protect, defend, and establish the Church, and this 
we conceive is impossible. 

Perhaps it may be said that the Church is in no 
immediate danger from the Dissenters, and therefore 
it is time enough. But this is a weak answer. 

For first, if a danger be real, the distance of it is 
no argument against, but rather a spur to quicken us 
to prevention, lest it be too late hereafter. 

And secondly, here is the opportunity, and the 
only one perhaps that ever the Church had, to secure 
herself and destroy her enemies. 

The representatives of the nation have now an 
opportunity; the time is come which all good men 
have wished for, that the gentlemen of England may 
serve the Church of England. Now they are pro- 
tected and encouraged by a Church of England 
Queen. 

What will you do for your sister in the day that 
she shall be spoken for ? 

If ever you will establish the best Christian Church 
in the world ; if ever you will suppress the spirit of 
enthusiasm ; if ever you will free the nation from the 
viperous brood that have so long sucked the blood of 
their mother ; if ever you will leave your posterity 
free from faction and rebellion, this is the time. 
This is the time to pull up this heretical weed of 



38 Political Pamphlets 

sedition that has so long disturbed the peace of our 
Church and poisoned the good corn. 

But, says another hot and cold objector, this is 
renewing fire and faggot, reviving the act De Heretico 
Comburendo; this will be cruelty in its nature, and 
barbarous to all the world. 

I answer, it is cruelty to kill a snake or a toad in 
cold blood, but the poison of their nature makes it a 
charity to our neighbours to destroy those creatures, 
not for any personal injury received, but for preven- 
tion ; not for the evil they have done, but the evil 
they may do. 

Serpents, toads, vipers, etc., are noxious to the 
body, and poison the sensitive life ; these poison 
the soul, corrupt our posterity, ensnare our children, 
destroy the vitals of our happiness, our future felicity, 
and contaminate the whole mass. 

Shall any law be given to such wild creatures? 
Some beasts are for sport, and the huntsmen give 
them advantages of ground ; but some are knocked on 
the head by all possible ways of violence and surprise. 

I do not prescribe fire and faggot, but, as Scipio 
said of Carthage, Delenda est Carthago. They are 
to be rooted out of this nation, if ever we will live in 
peace, serve God, or enjoy our own. As for the 
manner, I leave it to those hands who have a right to 
execute God's justice on the nation's and the Church's 
enemies. 



The Shortest Way with the Dissenters 39 

But if we must be frighted from this justice under 
the specious pretences and odious sense of cruelty, 
nothing will be effected : it will be more barbarous to 
our own children and dear posterity when they shall 
reproach their fathers, as we do ours, and tell us, 
'You had an opportunity to root out this cursed 
race from the world under the favour and protection 
of a true English queen ; and out of your foolish 
pity you spared them, because, forsooth, you would 
not be cruel ; and now our Church is suppressed 
and persecuted, our religion trampled under foot, 
our estates plundered, our persons imprisoned and 
dragged to jails, gibbets, and scaffolds : your sparing 
this Amalekite race is our destruction, your mercy to 
them proves cruelty to your poor posterity.' 

How just will such reflections be when our pos- 
terity shall fall under the merciless clutches of this 
uncharitable generation, when our Church shall be 
swallowed up in schism, faction, enthusiasm, and 
confusion ; when our Government shall be devolved 
upon foreigners, and our monarchy dwindled into a 
republic. 

It would be more rational for us, if we must spare 
this generation, to summon our own to a general 
massacre, and as we have brought them into the 
world free, send them out so, and not betray them to 
destruction by our supine negligence, and then cry, 
' It is mercy.' 



40 Political Pamphlets 

Moses was a merciful, meek man, and yet with 
what fury did he run through the camp, and cut 
the throats of three and thirty thousand of his dear 
Israelites that were fallen into idolatry. What was 
the reason ? It was mercy to the rest to make these 
examples, to prevent the destruction of the whole 
army. 

How many millions of future souls we save from 
infection and delusion if the present race of poisoned 
spirits were purged from the face of the land ! 

It is vain to trifle in this matter, the light, foolish 
handling of them by mulcts, fines, etc., — it is their 
glory and their advantage. If the gallows instead of 
the Counter, and the galleys instead of the fines, were 
the reward of going to a conventicle, to preach or 
hear, there would not be so many sufferers. The 
spirit of martyrdom is over; they that will go to 
church to be chosen sheriffs and mayors would go to 
forty churches rather than be hanged. 

If one severe law were made and punctually 
executed, that whoever was found at a conventicle 
should be banished the nation and the preacher be 
anged, we should soon see an end of the tale. 
They would all come to church, and one age would 
make us all one again. 

To talk of five shillings a month for not coming 
to the sacrament, and one shilling per week for not 
coming to church, this is such a way of converting 



The Shortest Way with the Dissenters 41 

people as never was known ; this is selling them a 
liberty to transgress for so much money. If it be not 
a crime, why don't we give them full license ? And 
if it be, no price ought to compound for the com- 
mitting it, for that is selling a liberty to people to 
sin against God and the Government. 

If it be a crime of the highest consequence both 
against the peace and welfare of the nation, the glory 
of God, the good of the Church, and the happiness 
of the soul, let us rank it among capital offences, and 
let it receive a punishment in proportion to it. 

We hang men for trifles, and banish them for 
things not worth naming ; but an offence against God 
and the Church, against the welfare of the world and 
the dignity of religion, shall be bought off for five 
shillings ! This is such a shame to a Christian 
Government that it is with regret I transmit it to 
posterity. 

If men sin against God, affront His ordinances, 
rebel against His Church, and disobey the precepts 
of their superiors, let them suffer as such capital 
crimes deserve. So will religion flourish, and this 
divided nation be once again united. 

And yet the title of barbarous and cruel will 
soon be taken off from this law too. I am not sup- 
posing that all the Dissenters in England should be 
hanged or banished, but, as in cases of rebellions 
and insurrections, if a few of the ringleaders suffer, 



42 Political Pamphlets 

the multitude are dismissed; so, a few obstinate 
people being made examples, there is no doubt but 
the severity of the law would find a stop in the com- 
pliance of the multitude. 

To make the reasonableness of this matter out of 
question, and more unanswerably plain, let us examine 
for what it is that this nation is divided into parties 
and factions, and let us see how they can justify a 
separation, or we of the Church of England can 
justify our bearing the insults and inconveniences of 
the party. 

One of their leading pastors, and a man of as 
much learning as most among them, in his answer to 
a pamphlet, entitled 'An Inquiry into the Occasional 
Conformity,' has these words, p. 27, 'Do the religion 
of the Church and the meeting-houses make two reli- 
gions ? Wherein do they differ ? The substance of 
the same religion is common to them both ; and the 
modes and accidents are the things in which only 
they differ.' P. 28: 'Thirty-nine articles are given 
us for the summary of our religion ; thirty-six contain 
the substance of it, wherein we agree; three the 
additional appendices, about which we have some 
differences.' 

Now, if, as by their own acknowledgment, the 
Church of England is a true Church, and the differ- 
ence between them is only in a few modes and 
accidents, why should we expect that they will suffer 



The Shortest Way with the Dissenters 43 

galleys, corporeal punishment, and banishment for 
these trifles ? There is no question but they will be 
wiser; even their own principles will not bear them 
out in it; they will certainly comply with the laws 
and with reason ; and though at the first severity they 
may seem hard, the next age will feel nothing of it ; 
the contagion will be rooted out ; the disease being 
cured, there will be no need of the operation ; but if 
they should venture to transgress and fall into the pit, 
all the world must condemn their obstinacy, as being 
without ground from their own principles. 

Thus the pretence of cruelty will be taken off, and 
the party actually suppressed, and the disquiets they 
have so often brought upon the nation prevented. 

Their numbers and their wealth make them 
haughty, and that is so far from being an argument 
to persuade us to forbear them, that it is a warning to 
us, without any delay, to reconcile them to the unity 
of the Church or remove them from us. 

At present, Heaven be praised, they are not so 
formidable as they have been, and it is our own fault 
if ever we suffer them to be so. Providence and the 
Church of England seem to join in this particular, 
that now the destroyers of the nation's peace may be 
overturned, and to this end the present opportunity 
seems to be put into our hands. 

To this end her present Majesty seems reserved to 
enjoy the crown, that the ecclesiastic as well as civil 



44 Political Pamphlets 

rights of the nation may be restored by her hand. 
To this end the face of affairs have received such a 
turn in the process of a few months as never has been 
before ; the leading men of the nation, the universal 
cry of the people, the unanimous request of the clergy, 
agree in this, that the deliverance of our Church is at 
hand. For this end has Providence given us such a 
Parliament, such a Convocation, such a gentry, and 
such a Queen as we never had before. And what 
may be the consequences of a neglect of such oppor- 
tunities ? The succession of the crown has but a 
dark prospect; another Dutch turn may make the 
hopes of it ridiculous and the practice impossible. 
Be the house of our future princes never so well 
inclined, they will be foreigners, and many years will 
be spent in suiting the genius of strangers to this 
crown and the interests of the nation ; and how many 
ages it may be before the English throne be filled 
with so much zeal and candour, so much tenderness 
and hearty affection to the Church as we see it now 
covered with, who can imagine ? 

It is high time, then, for the friends of the Church 
of England to think of building up and establishing 
her in such a manner that she may be no more 
invaded by foreigners nor divided by factions, schisms, 
and error. 

If this could be done by gentle and easy methods, 
I should be glad; but the wound is corroded, the 



The Shortest Way with the Dissenters 45 

vitals begin to mortify, and nothing but amputation 
of members can complete the cure ; all the ways of 
tenderness and compassion, all persuasive arguments, 
have been made use of in vain. 

The humour of the Dissenters has so increased 
among the people that they hold the Church in 
defiance, and the house of God is an abomination 
among them ; nay, they have brought up their pos- 
terity in such prepossessed aversions to our holy 
religion that the ignorant mob think we are all 
idolaters and worshippers of Baal, and account it a 
sin to come within the walls of our churches. 

The primitive Christians were not more shy of a 
heathen temple or of meat offered to idols, nor the 
Jews of swine's flesh, than some of our Dissenters are 
of the Church, and the divine service selemnised 
therein. 

This obstinacy must be rooted out with the pro- 
fession of it ; while the generation are less at liberty 
daily to affront God Almighty and dishonour His 
holy worship, we are wanting in our duty to God 
and our mother, the Church of England. 

How can we answer it to God, to the Church, 
and to our posterity, to leave them entangled with 
fanaticism, error, and obstinacy in the bowels of the 
nation ; to leave them an enemy in their streets, that 
in time may involve them in the same crimes, and en- 
danger the utter extirpation of religion in the nation ? 



4 6 Political Pamphlets 

What is the difference betwixt this and being sub- 
jected to the power of the Church of Rome, from 
whence we have reformed ? If one be an extreme on 
one hand, and one on another, it is equally destruct- 
ive to the truth to have errors settled among us, let 
them be of what nature they will. 

Both are enemies of our Church and of our peace ; 
and why should it not be as criminal to admit an 
enthusiast as a Jesuit ? Why should the Papist with 
his seven sacraments be worse than the Quaker with 
no sacraments at all ? Why should religious houses 
be more intolerable than meeting-houses ? Alas, the 
Church of England ! What with Popery on one 
hand, and schismatics on the other, how has she 
been crucified between two thieves ! 

Now let us crucify the thieves. Let her founda- 
tions be established upon the destruction of her 
enemies. The doors of mercy being always open to 
the returning part of the deluded people, let the 
obstinate be ruled with the rod of iron. 

Let all true sons of so holy and oppressed a 
mother, exasperated by her afflictions, harden their 
hearts against those who have oppressed her. 

And may God Almighty put it into the hearts of 
all the friends of truth to lift up a standard against 
pride and Antichrist, that the posterity of the sons of 
error may be rooted out from the face of this land 
for ever. 



III.— THE 'DRAPIER'S LETTERS' 

(NOS. I AND 2) 

By Jonathan Swift 

(The ttvo pamphlets entitled The Conduct of the 
Allies and The Public Spirit of the Whigs — which are 
sometimes considered the capital examples of the political 
efforts of Swiff s magnificent genius — were the very 
Jachin and Boaz of the Tory administration in the last 
years of Anne, and the effect of them has been admitted 
by such a violent Whig and such a good critic as Jeffrey. 
They seemed, however, not wholly suitable for insertion 
here ; first, because of their length (for one would have 
occupied nearly a third, the other nearly a fourth of this 
volume), and secondly, because the greater part of each 
does really, to some extent, underlie the charge brought 
against political pamphlets generally, and, being occupied 
with a great number of personal and particular matters, 
requires either much intimacy with the period or 
elaborate and probably tedious comparison and elucida- 
tion, to make it intelligible. No such drawback attaches 



48 Political Pamphlets 

to the almost more famous Drapier's Letters, of which 
I give the first and second. They were written at 
the very zenith of their author's marvellous powers, 
and at the time when his sseva indignatio was heated 
seven times hotter than usual by the conviction that his 
last hope of English promotion was gone. Their cir- 
cumstances are simple and well known. Wood had 
received a patent to coin copper money for Ireland to the 
amount of ;£ 108,000. Most commentators seem to 
think that he would have done this honestly enough ; to 
me the simple fact that on the revocation of his patent a 
pension of £3000 a year was given to him in compen- 
sation is proof enough of the contrary. It is impossible 
to imagine any honest profit on a transaction of such a 
nature to such an amount which could rise to the 
capital value of such a pension. That Swift was 
instigated to take up his pen against the transaction by 
private griefs against the Ministry is extremely probable • 
that the thing was not a job less so. As before, I must 
refer to biographers for the details of the matter ; the 
text is what interests us here. I shall only remind the 
reader that Swift was fifty-seven when the ' Drapier ' 
wrote, that Gulliver appeared about three years later, 
and that Swift himself expired — lunatic and miserable 
beyond utterance — on the 19th October 1745, twenty-one 
years after all Dublin and half England had rung 
with the boldness and the triumph of the 'Drapier.') 



The Drafter's Letters 49 



To the Tradesmen, Shop-Keepers, Farmers, and 
Common-People in general, of the Kingdom 
of Ireland ; concerning the Brass Half- 
pence coined by Mr. Wood. 

Brethren, Friends, Countrymen, and Fellow 
Subjects — What I intend now to say to you, is, next 
to your duty to God, and the care of your salvation, 
of the greatest concern to yourselves, and your 
children; your bread and clothing, and every common 
necessary of life entirely depend upon it. Therefore 
I do most earnestly exhort you as men, as Christians, 
as parents, and as lovers of your country, to read this 
paper with the utmost attention, or get it read to you 
by others ; which that you may do at the less expence, 
I have ordered the printer to sell it at the lowest rate. 

It is a great fault among you, that when a person 
writes with no other intention than to do you good 
you will not be at the pains to read his advices : 
one copy of this paper may serve a dozen of you, 
which will be less than a farthing a-piece. It is your 
folly that you have no common or general interest in 
your view, not even the wisest among you, neither do 
you know or enquire, or care who are your friends or 
who are your enemies. 

E 



5o Political Pamphlets 

About four years ago, a little book was written, to 
advise all people to wear the manufactures of this our 
own dear country : it had no other design, said 
nothing against the king or Parliament, or any man, 
yet the poor printer was prosecuted two years, with 
the utmost violence, and even some weavers them- 
selves, for whose sake it was written, being upon the 
jury, found him guilty. This would be enough to 
discourage any man from endeavouring to do you 
good, when you will either neglect him or fly in his 
face for his pains, and when he must expect only 
danger to himself and loss of money, perhaps to his 
ruin. 

However, I cannot but warn you once more of the 
manifest destruction before your eyes, if you do not 
behave yourselves as you ought. 

I will therefore first tell you the plain story of the 
fact ; and then I will lay before you how you ought 
to act in common prudence, and according to the 
laws of your country. 

The fact is thus, It having been many years since 
copper half-pence or farthings were last coined in this 
kingdom, they have been for some time very scarce, 
and many counterfeits passed about under the name 
of raps. Several applications were made to England, 
that we might have liberty to coin new ones, as in 
former times we did ; but they did not succeed. At 
last one Mr Wood a mean ordinary man, a hard- 



The Drapiers Letters 51 

ware dealer, procured a patent under his Majesty's 
Broad Seal to coin fourscore and ten thousand pounds 
in copper for this kingdom, which patent however 
did not oblige any one here to take them, unless they 
pleased. Now you must know, that the half-pence 
and farthings in England pass for very little more 
than they are worth. And if you should beat them 
to pieces, and sell them to the brazier, you would not 
lose above a penny in a shilling. But Mr. Wood 
made his half-pence of such base metal, and so much 
smaller than the English ones, that the brazier would 
not give you above a penny of good money for a 
shilling of his ; so that this sum of fourscore and ten 
thousand pounds in good gold and silver, must be 
given for trash that will not be worth above eight or 
nine thousand pounds real value. But this is not the 
worst, for Mr. Wood, when he pleases, may by stealth 
send over another and another fourscore and ten 
thousand pounds, and buy all our goods for eleven 
parts in twelve, under the value. For example, if a 
hatter sells a dozen of hats for five shillings a-piece, 
which amounts to three pounds, and receives the 
payment in Mr. Wood's coin, he really receives only 
the value of five shillings. 

Perhaps you will wonder how such an ordinary 
fellow as this Mr. Wood could have so much interest 
as to get his Majesty's Broad Seal for so great a sum 
of bad money to be sent to this poor countiy, and 



52 Political Pamphlets 

that all the nobility and gentry here could not obtain 
the same favour, and let us make our own half-pence, 
as we used to do. Now I will make that matter very 
plain. We are at a great distance from the king's 
court, and have nobody there to solicit for us, al- 
though a great number of lords and squires, whose 
estates are here, and are our countrymen, spend all 
their lives and fortunes there. But this same Mr. 
Wood was able to attend constantly for his own 
interest ; he is an Englishman and had great friends, 
and it seems knew very well where to give money to 
those that would speak to others that could speak to 
the king and could tell a fair story. And his 
majesty, and perhaps the great lord or lords who 
advised him, might think it was for our country's good ; 
and so, as the lawyers express it, the king was 
deceived in his grant, which often happens in all 
reigns. And I am sure if his majesty knew that such 
a patent, if it should take effect according to the 
desire of Mr. Wood, would utterly ruin this kingdom, 
which hath given such great proofs of its loyalty, he 
would immediately recall it, and perhaps show his 
displeasure to somebody or other : but a word to 
the wise is enough. Most of you must have heard, 
with what anger our honourable House of Commons 
receiv'd an account of this Wood's patent. There 
were several fine speeches made upon it, and plain 
proofs that it was all a wicked cheat from the bottom 



The Drapier's Letters S3 

to the top, and several smart votes were printed, which 
that same Wood had the assurance to answer likewise 
in print, and in so confident a way, as if he were a 
better man than our whole Parliament put together. 

This Wood, as soon as his patent was passed, or 
soon after, sends over a great many barrels of those 
half-pence, to Cork and other seaport towns, and to 
get them off, offered an hundred pounds in his coin 
for seventy or eighty in silver : but the collectors of 
the king's customs very honestly refused to take them, 
and so did almost everybody else. And since the 
Parliament hath condemned them, and desired the 
king that they might be stopped, all the kingdom do 
abominate them. 

But Wood is still working under hand to force his 
half-pence upon us, and if he can by help of his 
friends in England prevail so far as to get an order 
that the commissioners and collectors of the king's 
money shall receive them, and that the army is to be 
paid with them, then he thinks his work shall be done. 
And this is the difficulty you will be under in such a 
case : for the common soldier when he goes to the 
market or ale-house will offer this money, and if it be 
refused, perhaps he will swagger and hector, and 
threaten to beat the butcher or ale-wife, or take the 
goods by force, and throw them the bad half-pence. 
In this and the like cases the shop-keeper, or 
victualler, or any other tradesman, has no more to do 



54 Political Pamphlets 

than to demand ten times the price of his goods if it 
is to be paid in Wood's money ; for example, twenty 
pence of that money for a quart of ale, and so in 
all things else, and not part with his goods till he gets 
the money. 

For suppose you go to an ale-house with that base 
money, and the landlord gives you a quart for four of 
these half-pence, what must the victualler do ? His 
brewer will not be paid in that coin, or if the brewer 
should be such a fool, the farmers will not take it 
from them for their bere, because they are bound by 
their leases to pay their rents in good and lawful 
money of England, which this is not, nor of Ireland 
neither, and the Squire their landlord will never be so 
bewitched to take such trash for his land; so that it 
must certainly stop somewhere or other, and where- 
ever it stops it is the same thing, and we are all 
undone. 

The common weight of these half-pence is between 
four and five to an ounce ; suppose five, then three 
shillings and fourpence will weigh a pound, and conse- 
quently twenty shillings will weigh six pounds butter 
weight. Now there are many hundred farmers who 
pay two hundred pound a year rent. Therefore when 
one of these farmers comes with his half year's rent, 
which is one hundred pound, it will be at least six 
hundred pound weight, which is three horses load. 

If a squire has a mind to come to town to buy 



The D rapier's Letters 55 

clothes and wine and spices for himself and family, 
or perhaps to pass the winter here, he must bring 
with him five or six horses loaden with sacks as the 
farmers bring their corn • and when his lady comes 
in her coach to our shops, it must be followed by a 
car loaded with Mr. Wood's money. And I hope we 
shall have the grace to take it for no more than it is 
worth. 

They say Squire Conolly has sixteen thousand 
pounds a year ; now if he sends for his rent to town, 
as it is likely he does, he must have two hundred and 
fifty horses to bring up his half-year's rent, and two 
or three great cellars in his house for stowage. But 
what the bankers will do I cannot tell. For I am 
assured that some great bankers keep by them forty 
thousand pounds in ready cash, to answer all 
payments, which sum, in Mr. Wood's money, would 
require twelve hundred horses to carry it. 

For my own part, I am already resolved what to 
do; I have a pretty good shop of Irish stuffs and 
silks, and instead of taking Mr. Wood's bad copper, 
I intend to truck with my neighbours the butchers, 
and bakers, and brewers, and the rest, goods for 
goods, and the little gold and silver I have I will 
keep by me like my heart's blood till better times, or 
till I am just ready to starve, and then I will buy Mr. 
Wood's money, as my father did the brass money in 
K. James's time, who could buy ten pound of it with 



56 Political Pamphlets 

a guinea, and I hope to get as much for a pistole, and 
so purchase bread from those who will be such fools 
as to sell it me. 

These half-pence, if they once pass, will soon be 
counterfeit, because it may be cheaply done, the stuff 
is so base. The Dutch likewise will probably do the 
same thing, and send them over to us to pay for our 
goods ; and Mr. Wood will never be at rest but coin 
on : so that in some years we shall have at least five 
times fourscore and ten thousand pounds of this 
lumber. Now the current money of this kingdom is 
not reckoned to be above four hundred thousand 
pounds in all ; and while there is a silver sixpence 
left, these blood-suckers will never be quiet. 

When once the kingdom is reduced to such a 
condition I will tell you what must be the end : 
the gentlemen of estates will all turn off their tenants 
for want of payment, because, as I told you before, 
the tenants are obliged by their leases to pay sterling, 
which is lawful current money of England ; then they 
will turn their own farmers, as too many of them do 
already, run all into sheep where they can, keeping 
only such other cattle as are necessary ; then they 
will be their own merchants, and send their wool and 
butter and hides and linen beyond sea for ready 
money and wine and spices and silks. They will 
keep only a few miserable cottiers. The farmers 
must rob or beg, or leave their country. The shop- 



The Drapier's Letters 57 

keepers in this and every other town must break and 
starve : for it is the landed man that maintains the 
merchant, and shop-keeper, and handicraftsman. 

But when the squire turns farmer and merchant 
himself, all the good money he gets from abroad he 
will hoard up to send for England, and keep some 
poor tailor or weaver and the like in his own house, 
who will be glad to get bread at any rate. 

I should never have done, if I were to tell you all 
the miseries that we shall undergo if we be so foolish 
and wicked as to take this cursed coin. It would be 
very hard if all Ireland should be put into one scale, 
and this sorry fellow Wood, into the other, that Mr. 
Wood should weigh down this whole kingdom, by 
which England gets above a million of good money 
every year clear into their pockets, and that is more 
than the English do by all the world besides. 

But your great comfort is, that, as his majesty's 
patent does not oblige you to, take this money, so the 
laws have not given the Crown a power of forcing 
the subjects to take what money the king pleases : 
for then, by the same reason, we might be bound 
to take pebble -stones or cockle-shells, or stamped 
leather for current coin, if ever we should happen to 
live under an ill prince, who might likewise by the 
same power make a guinea pass for ten pounds, a 
shilling for twenty shillings, and so on, by which he 
would in a short time get all the silver and gold of 



58 Political Pamphlets 

the kingdom into his own hands, and leave us nothing 
but brass or leather or what he pleased. Neither is 
anything reckoned more cruel or oppressive in the 
French Government than their common practice of 
calling in all their money after they have sunk it very 
low, and then coining it a-new at a much higher 
value, which however is not the thousandth part so 
wicked as this abominable project of Mr. Wood. For 
the French give their subjects silver for silver, and 
gold for gold ; but this fellow will not so much as give 
us good brass or copper for our gold and silver, nor 
even a twelfth part of their worth. 

Having said this much, I will now go on to tell 
you the judgments of some great lawyers in this 
matter, whom I fee'd on purpose for your sakes, and 
got their opinions under their hands, that I might be 
sure I went upon good grounds. 

A famous law-book calPd the Mirrour of Justice^ 
discoursing of the articles (or laws) ordained by our 
ancient kings, declares the law to be as follows : It 
was ordained that no king of this realm should 
change, impair, or amend the money or make any other 
money than of gold or silver without the assent of all 
the counties, that is, as my Lord Coke says, without 
the assent of Parliament. 

This book is very ancient, and of great authority 
for the time in which it was wrote, and with that 
character is often quoted by that great lawyer my 



The Drapier y s Letters 59 

Lord Coke. By the laws of England, several metals 
are divided into lawful or true metal and unlawful or 
false metal ; the former comprehends silver or gold, 
the latter all baser metals : that the former is only 
to pass in payments appears by an Act of Parliament 
made the twentieth year of Edward the First, called 
the statute concerning the passing of pence, which I 
give you here as I got it translated into English ; for 
some of our laws at that time were, as I am told, writ 
in Latin : Whoever in buying or selling presumeth 
to refuse an half-penny or farthing of lawful money, 
bearing the stamp which it ought to have, let him be 
seized on as a contemner of the king's majesty, and 
cast to prison. 

By this statute, no person is to be reckoned a 
contemner of the king's majesty, and for that crime 
to be committed to prison, but he who refuses to 
accept the king's coin made of lawful metal, by which, 
as I observ'd before, silver and gold only are in- 
tended. 

That this is the true construction of the Act, 
appears not only from the plain meaning of the 
words, but from my Lord Coke's observation upon it. 
By this Act (says he) it appears that no subject can 
be forc'd to take in buying or selling or other pay- 
ments, any money made but of lawful metal ; that is, 
of silver or gold. 

The law of England gives the king all mines of 



60 Political Pamphlets 

gold and silver, but not the mines of other metals \ 
the reason of which prerogative or power, as it is given 
by my Lord Coke, is, because money can be made of 
gold and silver, but not of other metals. 

Pursuant to this opinion half-pence and farthings 
were anciently made of silver, which is more evident 
from the Act of Parliament of Henry the IVth. chap. 
4, by which it is enacted as follows : Item, for the 
great scarcity that is at present within the realm of 
England of half-pence and farthings of silver, it is or- 
dained and established that the third part of all the 
money of silver plate which shall be brought to the 
bullion, shall be made in half-pence and farthings. 
This shows that by the words half-penny and farthing 
of lawful money in that statute concerning the passing 
of pence, is meant a small coin in half- pence and 
farthings of silver. 

This is further manifest from the statute of the 
ninth year of Edward the Hid. chap. 3, which 
enacts, That no sterling half- penny or farthing be 
molten for to make vessel, or any other thing by the 
goldsmiths, nor others, upon forfeiture of the money 
so molten (or melted). 

By another Act in this king's reign black money 
was not to be current in England, and by an Act 
made in the eleventh year of his reign, chap. 5, 
galley half- pence were not to pass : what kind of 
coin these were I do not know, but I presume they 



The Drapier's Letters 61 

were made of base metal, and that these Acts were no 
new laws, but further declarations of the old laws 
relating to the coin. 

Thus the law stands in relation to coin, nor is 
there any example to the contrary, except one in 
Davis's Reports, who tells us, that in the time of 
Tyrone's rebellion Queen Elizabeth ordered money of 
mixt metal to be coined in the Tower of London, 
and sent over hither for payment of the army, 
obliging all people to receive it, and commanding that 
all silver money should be taken only as bullion, that 
is, for as much as it weighed. Davis tells us several 
particulars in this matter too long here to trouble you 
with, and that the Privy Council of this kingdom ob- 
liged a merchant in England to receive this mixt 
money for goods transmitted hither. 

But this proceeding is rejected by all the best 
lawyers as contrary to law, the Privy Council here 
having no such power. And, besides, it is to be con- 
sidered that the Queen was then under great diffi- 
culties by a rebellion in this kingdom, assisted from 
Spain, and whatever is done in great exigences and 
dangerous times should never be an example to 
proceed by in seasons of peace and quietness. 

I will now, my dear friends, to save you the 
trouble, set before you, in short, what the law obliges 
you to do, and what it does not oblige you to. 

First, You are oblig'd to take all money in 



62 Political Pamphlets 

payments which is coin'd by the king and is of the 
English standard or weight, provided it be of gold 
or silver. 

Secondly, You are not oblig'd to take any money 
which is not of gold or silver, not only the half-pence 
or farthings of England, or of any other country ; and 
it is only for convenience, or ease, that you are con- 
tent to take them, because the custom of coining silver 
half-pence and farthings hath long been left off, I will 
suppose on account of their being subject to be lost. 

Thirdly, Much less are we oblig'd to take those 
vile half-pence of that same Wood, by which you 
must lose almost eleven-pence in every shilling. 

Therefore, my friends, stand to it one and all, 
refuse this filthy trash : it is no treason to rebel 
against Mr. Wood ; his majesty in his patent obliges 
nobody to take these half-pence ; our gracious prince 
hath no so ill advisers about him ; or if he had, yet 
you see the laws have not left it in the king's power, 
to force us to take any coin but what is lawful, of 
right standard, gold and silver; therefore you have 
nothing to fear. 

And let me in the next place apply myself 
particularly to you who are the poor sort of trades- 
men : perhaps you may think you will not be so 
great losers as the rich if these half-pence should pass, 
because you seldom see any silver, and your customers 
come to your shops or stalls with nothing but brass, 



The D rapier's Letters 63 

which you likewise find hard to be got ; but you may 
take my word, whenever this money gains footing 
among you, you will be utterly undone ; if you carry 
these half-pence to a shop for tobacco or brandy, or 
any other thing you want, the shop-keeper will advance 
his goods accordingly, or else he must break and 
leave the key under the door. Do you think I will 
sell you a yard of tenpenny stuff for twenty of Mr. 
Wood's half-pence ? No, not under two hundred at 
least, neither will I be at the trouble of counting, but 
weigh them in a lump. I will tell you one thing 
further, that if Mr. Wood's project should take it will 
ruin even our beggars : for when I give a beggar 
an half-penny, it will quench his thirst, or go a good 
way to fill his belly ; but the twelfth part of a half- 
penny will do him no more service than if I should 
give him three pins out of my sleeve. 

In short those half-pence are like the accursed 
thing, which, as the Scripture tells us, the children of 
Israel were forbidden to touch ; they will run about 
like the plague and destroy every one who lays his 
hands upon them. I have heard scholars talk of a 
man who told a king that he had invented a way to 
torment people by putting them into a bull of brass 
with fire under it, but the prince put the projector 
first into his own brazen bull to make the experiment ; 
this very much resembles the project of Mr. Wood ; 
and the like of this may possibly be Mr. Wood's fate, 



64 Political Pamphlets 

that the brass he contrived to torment this kingdom 
with, may prove his own torment, and his destruction 
at last. 

N.B. — The author of this paper is inform'd by 
persons who have made it their business to be exact 
in their observations on the true value of these half- 
pence, that any person may expect to get a quart of 
twopenny ale for thirty-six of them. 

I desire all persons may keep this paper carefully 
by them to refresh their memories whenever they shall 
have further notice of Mr. Wood's half-pence or any 
other the like imposture. 

II 

A Letter to Mr. Harding the Printer, upon 
occasion of a paragraph in his news-paper 
of August i, 1724, relating to Mr. Wood's 
Half-pence. 

In your news-letter of the first instant there is a 
paragraph dated from London, July 25th, relating to 
Wood's half-pence ; whereby it is plain, what I fore- 
told in my letter to the shop-keepers, etc., that this 
vile fellow would never be at rest, and that the danger 
of our ruin approaches nearer, and therefore the 
kingdom requires new and fresh warning ; however I 
take that paragraph to be, in a great measure, an 



The Drapier's Letters 65 

imposition upon the public, at least I hope so, 
because I am informed that Wood is generally his 
own news-writer. I cannot but observe from that 
paragraph that this public enemy of ours, not 
satisfied to ruin us with his trash, takes every 
occasion to treat this kingdom with the utmost con- 
tempt. He represents several of our merchants and 
traders upon examination before a committee of a 
council, agreeing that there was the utmost necessity 
of copper -money here, before his patent, so that 
several gentlemen have been forced to tally with their 
workmen, and give them bits of cards sealed and 
subscribed with their names. What then ? If a 
physician prescribe to a patient a dram of physic, 
shall a rascal apothecary cram him with a pound, and 
mix it up with poison ? And is not a landlord's hand 
and seal to his own labourers a better security for 
five or ten shillings, than Wood's brass seven times 
below the real value, can be to the kingdom, for an 
hundred and four thousand pounds ? 

But who are these merchants and traders of 
Ireland that make this report of the utmost necessity 
we are under of copper money ? They are only a few 
betrayers of their country, confederates with Wood, 
from whom they are to purchase a great quantity of 
his coin, perhaps at half value, and vend it among us 
to the ruin of the public and their own private 
advantage. Are not these excellent witnesses, upon 

F 



66 Political Pamphlets 

whose integrity the fate of a kingdom must depend, 
who are evidences in their own cause, and sharers in 
this work of iniquity ? 

If we could have deserved the liberty of coining 
for ourselves, as we formerly did (and why we have 
not is everybody's wonder as well as mine), ten 
thousand pounds might have been coined here in 
Dublin of only one fifth below the intrinsic value, 
and this sum, with the stock of half-pence we then 
had, would have been sufficient : but Wood by his 
emissaries, enemies to God and this kingdom, hath 
taken care to buy up as many of our old half-pence 
as he could, and from thence the present want of 
change arises ; to remove which, by Mr. Wood's 
remedy, would be, to cure a scratch on the finger by 
cutting off the arm. But supposing there were not 
one farthing of change in the whole nation, I will 
maintain that five and twenty thousand pounds would 
be a sum fully sufficient to answer all our occasions. 
I am no inconsiderable shop-keeper in this town, I 
have discoursed with several of my own and other 
trades, with many gentlemen both of city and country, 
and also with great numbers of farmers, cottagers, 
and labourers, who all agree that two shillings in 
change for every family would be more than necessary 
in all dealings. Now by the largest computation 
(even before that grievous discouragement of agri- 
culture, which hath so much lessened our numbers) 



The Drapier's Letters 67 

the souls in this kingdom are computed to be one 
million and a half, which, allowing but six to a family, 
makes two hundred and fifty thousand families, and 
consequently two shillings to each family will amount 
only to five and twenty thousand pounds, whereas 
this honest liberal hard-ware-man Wood, would impose 
upon us above four times that sum. 

Your paragraph relates further, that Sir Isaac 
Newton reported an assay taken at the Tower, of 
Wood's metal, by which it appears that Wood had 
in all respects performed his contract. His contract ! 
With whom ? Was it with the Parliament or people of 
Ireland ? Are not they to be the purchasers ? But 
they detest, abhor, and reject it, as corrupt, fraudu- 
lent, mingled with dirt and trash. Upon which he 
grows angry, goes to law, and will impose his goods 
upon us by force. 

But your news-letter says that an assay was made 
of the coin. How impudent and insupportable is this ? 
Wood takes care to coin a dozen or two half-pence of 
good metal, sends them to the Tower and they are ap- 
proved, and these must answer all that he hath already 
coined or shall coin for the future. It is true, indeed, 
that a gentleman often sends to my shop for a 
pattern of stuff, I cut it fairly off, and if he likes it 
he comes or sends and compares the pattern with 
the whole piece, and probably we come to a bargain. 
But if I were to buy an hundred sheep, and the 



68 Political Pamphlets 

grazier should bring me one single weather fat and 
well fleeced by way of pattern, and expect the same 
price round for the whole hundred, without suffering 
me to see them before he was paid, or giving me 
good security to restore my money for those that were 
lean or shorn or scabby, I would be none of his 
customer. I have heard of a man who had a mind 
to sell his house, and therefore carried a piece of 
brick in his pocket, which he showed as a pattern to 
encourage purchasers : and this is directly the case 
in point with Mr. Wood's assay. 

The next part of the paragraph contains Mr. Wood's 
voluntary proposals for preventing any future objections 
or apprehensions. 

His first proposal is, that whereas he hath already 
coined seventeen thousand pounds, and has copper 
prepared to make it up forty thousand pounds, he will 
be content to coin no more, unless the exigences of 
trade require it, though his patent empowers him to 
coin a far greater quantity. 

To which if I were to answer it should be thus : 
Let Mr. Wood and his crew of founders and tinkers 
coin on till there is not an old kettle left in the 
kingdom ; let them coin old leather, tobacco-pipe 
clay, or the dirt in the streets, and call their trumpery 
by what name they please from a guinea to a farthing, 
we are not under any concern to know how he and 
his tribe or accomplices think fit to employ themselves. 



The Drapier's Letters 69 

But I hope and trust that we are all to a man fully 
determined to have nothing to do with him or his 
ware. 

The king has given him a patent to coin half- 
pence, but hath not obliged us to take them, and 
I have already shown in my Letter to the Shop- 
keepers, etc., that the law hath not left it in the 
power of the prerogative to compel the subject to 
take any money, beside gold and silver of the 
right sterling and standard. 

Wood further proposes, (if I understand him right, 
for his expressions are dubious) that he will not coin 
above forty thousand pounds unless the exigences of 
trade require it : First, I observe that this sum of 
forty thousand pounds is almost double to what I 
proved to be sufficient for the whole kingdom, 
although we had not one of our old half-pence left. 
Again I ask, who is to be judge when the exigences 
of trade require it ? Without doubt he means himself, 
for as to us of this poor kingdom, who must be 
utterly ruined if his project should succeed, we were 
never once consulted till the matter was over, and he 
will judge of our exigences by his own ; neither will 
these be ever at an end till he and his accomplices 
will think they have enough : and it now appears 
that he will not be content with all our gold and silver, 
but intends to buy up our goods and manufactures 
with the same coin. 



70 Political Pamphlets 

I shall not enter into examination of the prices for 
which he now proposes to sell his half-pence or what 
he calls his copper, by the pound ; I have said 
enough of it in my former letter, and it hath likewise 
been considered by others. It is certain that, by his 
own first computation, we were to pay three shillings 
for what was intrinsically worth but one, although it 
had been of the true weight and standard for which 
he pretended to have contracted ; but there is so 
great a difference both in weight and badness in 
several of his coins that some of them have been 
nine in ten below the intrinsic value, and most of 
them six or seven. 

His last proposal being of a peculiar strain and 
nature, deserves to be very particularly consider'd, both 
on account of the matter and the style. It is as 
follows. 

Lastly, in consideration of the direful apprehensions 
which prevail in Ireland, that Mr. Wood will by such 
coinage drain them of their gold and silver, he pro- 
poses to take their manufactures in exchange, and 
that no person be obliged to receive more than five- 
pence half-penny at one payment. 

First, observe this little impudent hard-ware-man 
turning into ridicule the direful apprehensions of a 
whole kingdom, priding himself as the cause of them, 
and daring to prescribe what no king of England ever 
attempted, how far a whole nation shall be obliged to 



The Drapier's Letters 71 

take his brass coin. And he has reason to insult ; 
for sure there was never an example in history of a 
great kingdom kept in awe for above a year in daily 
dread of utter destruction, not by a powerful in- 
vader at the head of twenty thousand men, not by a 
plague or a famine, not by a tyrannical prince (for we 
never had one more gracious) or a corrupt admini- 
stration, but by one single, diminutive, insignificant, 
mechanic. 

But to go on. To remove our direful appre- 
hensions that he will drain us of our gold and silver 
by his coinage, this little arbitrary mock-monarch 
most graciously offers to take our manufactures in 
exchange. Are our Irish understandings indeed so 
low in his opinion ? Is not this the very misery we 
complain of? That his cursed project will put us 
under the necessity of selling our goods for what is 
equal to nothing. How would such a proposal sound 
from France or Spain, or any other country we deal 
with, if they should offer to deal with us only upon 
this condition, that we should take their money at ten 
times higher than the intrinsic value? Does Mr. 
Wood think, for instance, that we will sell him a stone 
of wool for a parcel of his counters not worth six- 
pence, when we can send it to England and receive 
as many shillings in gold and silver ? Surely there 
was never heard such a compound of impudence, 
villainy and folly. 



72 Political Pamphlets 

His proposals conclude with perfect high-treason. 
He promises, that no person shall be obliged to 
receive more than five-pence half-penny of his coin in 
one payment : by which it is plain that he pretends 
to oblige every subject in this kingdom to take so 
much in every payment, if it be offered ; whereas his 
patent obliges no man, nor can the prerogative by 
law claim such a power, as I have often observed ; so 
that here Mr. Wood takes upon him the entire 
legislature, and an absolute dominion over the pro- 
perties of the whole nation. 

Good God ! Who are this wretch's advisers ? 
Who are his supporters, abettors, encouragers, or 
sharers ? Mr. Wood will oblige me to take five-pence 
half-penny of his brass in every payment. And I will 
shoot Mr. Wood and his deputies through the head, 
like highway-men or house-breakers, if they dare to 
force one farthing of their coin upon me in the pay- 
ment of an hundred pounds. It is no loss of honour 
to submit to the lion ; but who, with the figure of a 
man can think with patience of being devoured alive 
by a rat? He has laid a tax upon the people of 
Ireland of seventeen shillings at least in the pound ; 
a tax, I say, not only upon lands, but interest-money, 
goods, manufactures, the hire of handicraftsmen, 
labourers and servants. Shop-keepers, look to your- 
selves. Wood will oblige and force you to take five- 
pence half-penny of his trash in every payment, and 



The Drapier's Letters 73 

many of you receive twenty, thirty, forty, payments in 
one day, or else you can hardly find bread : and 
pray consider how much that will amount to in a 
year; twenty times five-pence half-penny is nine 
shillings and two-pence, which is above an hundred 
and sixty pounds a year, whereof you will be losers 
of at least one hundred and forty pounds by taking 
your payments in his money. If any of you be con- 
tent to deal with Mr. Wood on such conditions they 
may. But for my own particular, let his money 
perish with him. If the famous Mr. Hampden rather 
chose to go to prison than pay a few shillings to King 
Charles I. without authority of Parliament, I will 
rather choose to be hanged than have all my substance 
taxed at seventeen shillings in the pound, at the 
arbitrary will and pleasure of the venerable Mr. 
Wood. 

The paragraph concludes thus. N.B. (that is to 
say nota bene, or mark well) No evidence appeared 
from Ireland or elsewhere, to prove the mischiefs 
complained of, or any abuses whatsoever committed 
in the execution of the said grant. 

The impudence of this remark exceeds all that 
went before. First, the House of Commons in 
Ireland, which represents the whole people of the 
kingdom ; and secondly the Privy Council, addressed 
his majesty against these half-pence. What could be 
done more to express the universal sense and opinion 



74 Political Pamphlets 

of the nation ? If his copper were diamonds, and the 
kingdom were entirely against it, would not that be 
sufficient to reject it? Must a committee of the 
House of Commons, and our whole Privy Council go 
over to argue pro and con with Mr. Wood? To 
what end did the king give his patent for coining of 
half-pence in Ireland? Was it not, because it was 
represented to his sacred majesty, that such a coinage 
would be of advantage to the good of this kingdom, 
and of all his subjects here ? It is to the patentee's 
peril if his representation be false, and the execution 
of his patent be fraudulent and corrupt. Is he so 
wicked and foolish to think that his patent was given 
him to ruin a million and a half of people, that he 
might be a gainer of three or fourscore thousand 
pounds to himself? Before he was at the charge of 
passing a patent, much more of raking up so much 
filthy dross, and stamping it with his majesty's image 
and superscription, should he not first in common 
sense, in common equity, and common manners, have 
consulted the principal party concerned ; that is to 
say, the people of the kingdom, the House of Lords 
or Commons, or the Privy Council ? If any foreigner 
should ask us, whose image and superscription there 
is on Wood's coin, we should be ashamed to tell him, 
it was Caesar's. In that great want of copper half- 
pence, which he alleges we were, our city set up our 
Caesar's statue in excellent copper, at an expence 



The D rapier s Letters 75 

that is equal in value to thirty thousand pounds of his 
coin ; and we will not receive his image in worse metal. 
I observe many of our people putting a melan- 
choly case on this subject. It is true say they, we 
are all undone if Wood's half-pence must pass ; but 
what shall we do, if his majesty puts out a proclama- 
tion commanding us to take them ? This has been 
often dinned in my ears. But I desire my country- 
men to be assured that there is nothing in it. The 
king never issues out a proclamation but to enjoin 
what the law permits him. He will not issue out a 
proclamation against law, or if such a thing should 
happen by a mistake, we are no more obliged to obey 
it than to run our heads into the fire. Besides, his 
majesty will never command us by a proclamation, 
what he does not offer to command us in the patent 
itself. There he leaves it to our discretion, so that 
our destruction must be entirely owing to ourselves. 
Therefore let no man be afraid of a proclamation, 
which will never be granted ; and if it should, yet 
upon this occasion, will be of no force. The king's 
revenues here are near four hundred thousand pounds 
a year, can you think his ministers will advise him to 
take them in Wood's brass, which will reduce the 
value to fifty thousand pounds ? England gets a 
million sterl. by this nation, which, if this project goes 
on, will be almost reduc'd to nothing : and do you 
think those who live in England upon Irish estates 



76 Political Pamphlets 

will be content to take an eighth or a tenth part, by 
being paid in Wood's dross ? 

If Wood and his confederates were not convinced 
of our stupidity, they never would have attempted so 
audacious an enterprise. He now sees a spirit hath 
been raised against him, and he only watches till it 
begins to flag, he goes about watching when to 
devour us. He hopes we shall be weary of contend- 
ing with him, and at last out of ignorance, or fear, or 
of being perfectly tired with opposition, we shall be 
forced to yield. And therefore I confess it is my 
chief endeavour to keep up your spirits and resentments. 
If I tell you there is a precipice under you, and that 
if you go forwards you will certainly break your necks 
— if I point to it before your eyes, must I be at the 
trouble of repeating it every morning? Are our 
people's hearts waxed gross ? Are their ears dull of 
hearing, and have they closed their eyes ? I fear there 
are some few vipers among us, who, for ten or twenty 
pounds' gain, would sell their souls and their country, 
though at last it would end in their own ruin as well as 
ours. Be not like the deaf adder, who refuses to hear 
the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely. 

Though my letter be directed to you, Mr. Harding, 
yet I intend it for all my countrymen. I have no 
interest in this affair but what is common to the 
public ; I can live better than many others, I have 
some gold and silver by me, and a shop well furnished, 



The Drapier's Letters 77 

and shall be able to make a shift when many of my 
betters are starving. But I am grieved to see the 
coldness and indifference of many people with whom 
I discourse. Some are afraid of a proclamation, 
others shrug up their shoulders, and cry, what would 
you have us to do? Some give out, there is no 
danger at all. Others are comforted that it will be a 
common calamity and they shall fare no worse than 
their neighbours. Will a man, who hears midnight- 
robbers at his door, get out of bed, and raise his 
family for a common defence, and shall a whole 
kingdom lie in a lethargy, while Mr. Wood comes at 
the head of his confederates to rob them of all they 
have, to ruin us and our posterity for ever ? If an 
high-way-man meets you on the road, you give him 
your money to save your life ; but, God be thanked, 
Mr. Wood cannot touch a hair of your heads. You 
have all the laws of God and man on your side. 
When he or his accomplices offer you his dross, it is 
but saying No, and you are safe. If a madman 
should come to my shop with a handful of dirt raked 
out of the kennel, and offer it in payment for ten 
yards of stuff, I would pity or laugh at him, or, if his 
behaviour deserved it, kick him out of my doors. 
And if Mr. Wood comes to demand any gold or 
silver, or commodities for which I have paid my 
gold and silver, in exchange for his trash, can he 
deserve or expect better treatment ? 



73 Political Pamphlets 

When the evil day is come (if it must come) let 
us mark and observe those who presume to offer these 
half-pence in payment. Let their names and trades, 
and places of abode be made public, that every one 
may be aware of them, as betrayers of their country, 
and confederates with Mr. Wood. Let them be watched 
at markets and fairs, and let the first honest 
discoverer give the word about, that Wood's half-pence 
have been offered, and caution the poor innocent 
people not to receive them. 

Perhaps I have been too tedious ; but there would 
never be an end, if I attempt to say all that this 
melancholy subject will bear. I will conclude with 
humbly offering one proposal, which if it were put in 
practice, would blow up this destructive project at 
once. Let some skilful judicious pen draw up an 
advertisement to the following purpose : 

Whereas one William Wood, hard-ware-man, now or 
lately sojourning in the city of London, hath, by many 
misrepresentations, procured a patent for coining an 
hundred and forty thousand pounds in copper half- 
pence for this kingdom, which is a sum five times 
greater than our occasions require : And whereas it is 
notorious that the said Wood hath coined his half- 
pence of such base metal and false weight, that they 
are, at least, six parts in seven below the real value : 
And whereas we have reason to apprehend that the 
said Wood may, at any time hereafter, clandestinely 



The Drapiers Letters 79 

coin as many more half-pence as he pleases: And 
whereas the said patent neither doth nor can oblige 
his majesty's subjects to receive the said half-pence in 
any payment, but leaves it to their voluntary choice, 
because, by law the subject camiot be obliged to take 
any money except gold or silver : And whereas, con- 
trary to the letter and meaning of the said patent, 
the said Wood hath declared that every person shall 
be obliged to take five-pence halfpenny of his coin 
in every payment: And whereas the House of 
Commons and Privy Council have severally addressed 
his most sacred majesty representing the ill conse- 
quences which the said coinage may have upon this 
kingdom : And lastly, whereas it is universally agreed, 
that the whole nation to a man {except Mr. Wood 
and his confederates) are in the utmost apprehensions 
of the ruinous consequences that must follow from 
the said coinage. Therefore we, whose names are 
underwritten, being persons of considerable estates in 
this kingdom, and residers therein, do unanimously 
resolve and declare that we will never receive one 
farthing or halfpenny of the said Wood's coining, 
and that we will direct all our tenants to refuse the 
said coin from any person whatsoever ; of which, that 
they may not be ignorant, we have sent them a copy 
of this advertisement, to be read to them by our stewards, 
receivers, etc. 

I could wish, that a paper of this nature might be 



80 Political Pamphlets 

drawn up, and signed by two or three hundred 
principal gentlemen of this kingdom, and printed 
copies thereof sent to their several tenants ; I am 
deceived, if anything could sooner defeat this 
execrable design of Wood and his accomplices. This 
would immediately give the alarm, and set the king- 
dom on their guard. This would give courage to the 
meanest tenant and cottager. How long, O Lord, 
righteous and true, etc. 

I must tell you in particular, Mr. Harding, that 
you are much to blame. Several hundred persons have 
enquired at your house for my Letter to the Shop- 
keepers, etc., and you had none to sell them. Pray 
keep yourself provided with that letter and with this ; 
you have got very well by the former, but I did not 
then write for your sake, any more than I do now. 
Pray advertise both in every news-paper, and let it 
not be your fault or mine if our countrymen will not 
take warning. I desire you likewise to sell them as 
cheap as you can. — I am your Servant, M. B. 

Aug. 4, 1724. 



IV.— 'SECOND LETTER ON A REGICIDE 
PEACE ' 

By The Right Honourable Edmund Burke 

(/ have found the selection of a suitable sample of 
Burke to be my most difficult task in this volume. All his 
writings ; as I have pointed out in the general introduc- 
tion, are, after a sort, pamphlets ; and this of itself 
was an embarrassment. It was partly complicated 
and partly lessened by the fact that the form of his 
speeches naturally excluded them. Many of his other 
works — notably the Thoughts on the Present Dis- 
contents, the immortal Reflections on the French 
Revolution, and the Appeal from the New Whigs 
to the Old — were much too long for a scheme in 
which I have made it a rule to give in each case entire 
works or divisions of works. I at last reduced the 
suitable candidates to three — the Letter to Sir Hercules 
Langrishe, that To a Noble Lord, and the present 
number of the Letters on a Regicide Peace. The first 

G 



82 Political Pamphlets 

went as being to some extent identical in subject with 
the examples of another writer ; Sydney Smith, which I 
had already resolved on giving ; the second as being too 
much in the nature of a personal apologia. With the 
third, which I looked on at first with least favour, I 
have become increasingly well satisfied. It has not the 
gorgeous rhetoric of The Letter to a Noble Lord, the 
Reflections, and others. It has nothing so lively as the 
contrast between France and Algiers in its immediate 
predecessor. It may even seem, to those who have accus- 
tomed themselves to think of Burke wholly or mainly as 
a gorgeous rhetorician, rather tame as a whole. But 
if it does not soar, it never droops ; it is admirably 
proportioned, admirably written, and admirably argued 
throughout, and it shows great knowledge and mastery 
of foreign politics — the point in which English states- 
men have always been weakest. I may add that it 
seems to me a triumphant refutation of the charge* — 
constantly brought against Burke not merely by extreme 
democrats, but by the usual advocate of the juste milieu, — 
that in his later years, and especially in these very Letters, 
he became a mere raving Gallophobe, with no sense of 
proportion or circumstance. For my part, I have read 
scores, probably hundreds, of books — English, French, 
and German — on the French Revolution ; I have never 
read one that made Burke obsolete. Let it only be 
added that the author, who was born in 1730, was very 
near the end of his career — he died next year — when 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 83 

he wrote these letters, and that the peace proposals which 
he deprecated, and which he did not a little to avert, 
were dictated on the one side by the sobering down of 
the first Revolutionary fervour under the Directory ; on 
the other by the persistent ill-success of the Allies, and 
the conflicts of interest and principle which had arisen 
among them.} 

My dear Sir — I closed my first letter with 
serious matter, and I hope it has employed your 
thoughts. The system of peace must have a re- 
ference to the system of the war. On that ground, 
I must therefore again recall your mind to our 
original opinions, which time and events have not 
taught me to vary. 

My ideas and my principles led me, in this contest, 
to encounter France, not as a state, but as a faction. 
The vast territorial extent of that country, its immense 
population, its riches of production, its riches of com- 
merce and convention — the whole aggregate mass ot 
what, in ordinary cases, constitutes the force of a 
state, to me were but objects of secondary considera- 
tion. They might be balanced ; and they have been 
often more than balanced. Great as these things are, 
they are not what make the faction formidable. It is 
the faction that makes them truly dreadful. That 
faction is the evil spirit that possesses the body of 
France ; that informs it as a soul ; that stamps upon 



84 Political Pamphlets 

its ambition, and upon all its pursuits, a characteristic 
mark, which strongly distinguishes them from the 
same general passions, and the same general views, 
in other men and in other communities. It is that 
spirit which inspires into them a new, a pernicious, a 
desolating activity. Constituted as France was ten 
years ago, it was not in that France to shake, to 
shatter, and to overwhelm Europe in the manner that 
we behold. A sure destruction impends over those 
infatuated princes, who, in the conflict with this 
new and unheard-of power, proceed as if they 
were engaged in a war that bore a resemblance to 
their former contests ; or that they can make peace 
in the spirit of their former arrangements of pacifica- 
tion. Here the beaten path is the very reverse of 
the safe road. 

As to me, I was always steadily of opinion, that 
this disorder was not in its nature intermittent. I 
conceived that the contest, once begun, could not be 
laid down again, to be resumed at our discretion ; 
but that our first struggle with this evil would also be 
our last. I never thought we could make peace with 
the system ; because it was not for the sake of an 
object we pursued in rivalry with each other, but with 
the system itself, that we were at war. As I under- 
stood the matter, we were at war not with its conduct, 
but with its existence; convinced that its existence 
and its hostility were the same. 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 85 

The faction is not local or territorial. It is a 
general evil. Where it least appears in action, it is 
still full of life. In its sleep it recruits its strength, 
and prepares its exertion. Its spirit lies deep in the 
corruption of our common nature. The social order 
which restrains it, feeds it. It exists in every country 
in Europe ; and among all orders of men in every 
country, who look up to France as to a common head. 
The centre is there. The circumference is the world 
of Europe wherever the race of Europe may be settled. 
Everywhere else the faction is militant ; in France it 
is triumphant. In France it is the bank of deposit, 
and the bank of circulation, of all the pernicious 
principles that are forming in every state. It will be 
folly scarcely deserving of pity, and too mischievous 
for contempt, to think of restraining it in any other 
country whilst it is predominant there. War, instead 
of being the cause of its force, has suspended its 
operation. It has given a reprieve, at least, to the 
Christian world. 

The true nature of a Jacobin war, in the beginning, 
was, by most of the Christian powers, felt, acknow- 
ledged, and even in the most precise manner declared. 
In the joint manifesto, published by the emperor and 
the king of Prussia, on the 4th of August, 1792, it is 
expressed in the clearest terms, and on principles 
which could not fail, if they had adhered to them, of 
classing those monarchs with the first benefactors of 



86 Political Pamphlets 

mankind. This manifesto was published, as they 
themselves express it, 'to lay open to the present 
generation, as well as to posterity, their motives, their 
intentions, and the disinterestedness of their personal 
views ; taking up arms for the purpose of preserving 
social and political order amongst all civilised nations, 
and to secure to each state its religion, happiness, 
independence, territories, and real constitution.' — ' On 
this ground, they hoped that all empires and all states 
would be unanimous; and becoming the firm guardians 
of the happiness of mankind, that they could not fail to 
unite their efforts to rescue a numerous nation from 
its own fury, to preserve Europe from the return of 
barbarism, and the universe from the subversion and 
anarchy with which it was threatened.' The whole 
of that noble performance ought to be read at the 
first meeting of any congress which may assemble for 
the purpose of pacification. In that piece ' these 
powers expressly renounce all views of personal 
aggrandisement,' and confine themselves to objects 
worthy of so generous, so heroic, and so perfectly wise 
and politic an enterprise. It was to the principles of 
this confederation, and to no other, that we wished our 
sovereign and our country to accede, as a part of the 
commonwealth of Europe. To these principles with 
some trifling exceptions and limitations they did fully 
accede. And all our friends who took office acceded 
to the ministry (whether wisely or not), as I always 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 87 

understood the matter, on the faith and on the prin- 
ciples of that declaration. 

As long as these powers flattered themselves that 
the menace of force would produce the effect of force, 
they acted on those declarations : but when their 
menaces failed of success, their efforts took a new 
direction. It did not appear to them that virtue and 
heroism ought to be purchased by millions of rix- 
dollars. It is a dreadful truth, but it is a truth that 
cannot be concealed ; in ability, in dexterity, in the 
distinctness of their views, the Jacobins are our 
superiors. They saw the thing right from the very 
beginning. Whatever were the first motives to the 
war among politicians, they saw that in its spirit, and 
for its objects, it was a civil war ; and as such they 
pursued it. It is a war between the partisans of the 
ancient, civil, moral, and political order of Europe, 
against a sect of fanatical and ambitious atheists 
which means to change them all. It is not France 
extending a foreign empire over other nations ; it is a 
sect aiming at universal empire, and beginning with 
the conquest of France. The leaders of that sect 
secured the centre of Europe \ and that secured, they 
knew, that whatever might be the event of battles and 
sieges, their cause was victorious. Whether its terri- 
tory had a little more or a little less peeled from its 
surface, or whether an island or two was detached 
from its commerce, to them was of little moment. 



88 Political Pamphlets 

The conquest of France was a glorious acquisition. 
That once well laid as a basis of empire, opportunities 
never could be wanting to regain or to replace what 
had been lost, and dreadfully to avenge themselves on 
the faction of their adversaries. 

They saw it was a civil war. It was their business 
to persuade their adversaries that it ought to be a 
foreign war. The Jacobins everywhere set up a cry 
against the new crusade ; and they intrigued with 
effect in the cabinet, in the field, and in every private 
society in Europe. Their task was not difficult. 
The condition of princes, and sometimes of first 
ministers too, is to be pitied. The creatures of the 
desk, and the creatures of favour, had no relish for 
the principles of the manifestoes. They promised no 
governments, no regiments, no revenues from whence 
emoluments might arise by perquisite or by grant. In 
truth, the tribe of vulgar politicians are the lowest of 
our species. There is no trade so vile and mechanical 
as government in their hands. Virtue is not their 
habit. They are out of themselves in any course of 
conduct recommended only by conscience and glory. 
A large, liberal, and prospective view of the interests 
of states passes with them for romance ; and the 
principles that recommend it, for the wanderings of a 
disordered imagination. The calculators compute 
them out of their senses. The jesters and buffoons 
shame them out of everything grand and elevated. 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 89 

Littleness in object and in means, to them appears 
soundness and sobriety. They think there is nothing 
worth pursuit but that which they can handle ; which 
they can measure with a two-foot rule: 'which they 
can tell upon ten fingers. 

Without the principles of the Jacobins, perhaps 
without any principles at all, they played the game of 
that faction. There was a beaten road before them. 
The powers of Europe were armed; France had 
always appeared dangerous ; the war was easily 
diverted from France as a faction, to France as a 
state. The princes were easily taught to slide back 
into their old, habitual course of politics.. They were 
easily led to consider the flames that were consuming 
France, not as a warning to protect their own build- 
ings (which were without any party wall, and linked 
by a contignation into the edifice of France,) but as a 
happy occasion for pillaging the goods, and for carry- 
ing off the materials, of their neighbour's house. 
Their provident fears were changed into avaricious 
hopes. They carried on their new designs without 
seeming to abandon the principles of their old policy. 
They pretended to seek, or they flattered themselves 
that they sought, in the accession of new fortresses, 
and new territories, a defensive security. But the 
security wanted was against a kind of power which 
was not so truly dangerous in its fortresses nor in its 
territories, as in its spirit and its principles. The 



9 o Political Pamphlets 

aimed, or pretended to aim, at defending themselves 
against a danger from which there can be no security 
in any defensive plan. If armies and fortresses were 
a defence against Jacobinism, Louis the Sixteenth 
would this day reign a powerful monarch over a 
happy people. 

This error obliged them, even in their offensive 
operations, to adopt a plan of war, against the success 
of which there was something little short of mathe- 
matical demonstration. They refused to take any 
step which might strike at the heart of affairs. They 
seemed unwilling to wound the enemy in any vital 
part. They acted through the whole, as if they really 
wished the conservation of the Jacobin power, as 
what might be more favourable than the lawful 
government to the attainment of the petty objects 
they looked for. They always kept on the circum- 
ference ; and the wider and remoter the circle was, 
the more eagerly they chose it as their sphere of 
action in this centrifugal war. The plan they pursued, 
in its nature demanded great length of time. In its 
execution, they, who went the nearest way to work, 
were obliged to cover an incredible extent of country. 
It left to the enemy every means of destroying this 
extended line of weakness. Ill success in any part 
was sure to defeat the effect of the whole. This is 
true of Austria. It is still more true of England. 
On this false plan, even good fortune, by further 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 91 

weakening the victor, put him but the further off from 
his object. 

As long as there was any appearance of success, 
the spirit of aggrandisement, and consequently the 
spirit of mutual jealousy, seized upon all the coalesced 
powers. Some sought an accession of territory at 
the expense of France, some at the expense of each 
other, some at the expense of third parties ; and 
when the vicissitude of disaster took its turn, they 
found, common distress a treacherous bond of faith 
and friendship. 

The greatest skill conducting the greatest military 
apparatus has been employed ; but it has been worse 
than uselessly employed, through the false policy of 
the war. The operations of the field suffered by the 
errors of the cabinet. If the same spirit continues 
when peace is made, the peace will fix and perpetuate 
all the errors of the war; because it will be made 
upon the same false principle. What has been lost 
in the field, in the field may be regained. An 
arrangement of peace in its nature is a permanent 
settlement ; it is the effect of counsel and deliberation, 
and not of fortuitous events. If built upon a basis 
fundamentally erroneous, it can only be retrieved by 
some of those unforeseen dispensations, which the 
all-wise but mysterious Governor of the world some- 
times interposes, to snatch nations from ruin. It 
would not be pious error, but mad and impious 



92 Political Pamphlets 

presumption, for any one to trust in an unknown order 
of dispensations, in defiance of the rules of prudence, 
which are formed upon the known march of the 
ordinary providence of God. 

It was not of that sort of war that I was amongst 
the least considerable, but amongst the most zealous 
advisers ; and it is not by the sort of peace now 
talked of, that I wish it concluded. It would answer 
no great purpose to enter into the particular errors of 
the war. The whole has been but one error. It was 
but nominally a war of alliance. As the combined 
powers pursued it there was nothing to hold an 
alliance together. There could be no tie of honour , 
in a society for pillage. There could be no tie of a 
common interest where the object did not offer such a 
division amongst the parties as could well give them 
a warm concern in the gains of each other, or could 
indeed form such a body of equivalents, as might 
make one of them willing to abandon a separate 
object of his ambition for the gratification of any 
other member of the alliance. The partition of 
Poland offered an object of spoil in which the parties 
might agree. They were circumjacent, and each 
might take a portion convenient to his own territory. 
They might dispute about the value of their several 
shares, but the contiguity to each of the demandants 
always furnished the means of an adjustment. Though 
hereafter the world will have cause to rue this iniquitous 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 93 

measure, and they most who were the most con- 
cerned in it, for the moment there was wherewithal 
in the object to preserve peace amongst confederates 
in wrong. But the spoil of France did not afford 
the same facilities for accommodation. What might 
satisfy the house of Austria in a Flemish frontier, 
afforded no equivalent to tempt the cupidity of the 
king of Prussia. What might be desired by Great 
Britain in the West Indies, must be coldly and 
remotely, if at all, felt as an interest at Vienna ; and 
it would be felt as something worse than a negative 
interest at Madrid. Austria, long possessed with 
unwise and dangerous designs on Italy, could not be 
very much in earnest about the conservation of the 
old patrimony of the house of Savoy ; and Sardinia, 
who owed to an Italian force all her means of shutting 
out France from Italy, of which she has been supposed 
to hold the key, would not purchase the means of 
strength upon one side by yielding it on the other. 
She would not readily give the possession of Nov- 
ara for the hope of Savoy. No continental power 
was willing to lose any of its continental objects for 
the increase of the naval power of Great Britain ; and 
Great Britain would not give up any of the objects 
she sought for as the means of an increase to her 
naval power, to further their aggrandisement. 

The moment this war came to be considered as 
a war merely of profit, the actual circumstances are 



94 Political Pamphlets 

such that it never could become really a war of 
alliance. Nor can the peace be a peace of alliance, 
until things are put upon their right bottom. 

I do not find it denied that when a treaty is 
entered into for peace, a demand will be made on 
the regicides to surrender a great part of their con- 
quests on the continent. Will they, in the present 
state of the war, make that surrender without an 
equivalent ? This continental cession must of course 
be made in favour of that party in the alliance that 
has suffered losses. That party has nothing to furnish 
towards an equivalent. What equivalent, for instance, 
has Holland to offer, who has lost her all? What 
equivalent can come from the Emperor, every part of 
whose territories contiguous to France is already 
within the pale of the regicide dominions? What 
equivalent has Sardinia to offer for Savoy and for 
Nice, I may say for her whole being? What has 
she taken from the faction of France ? she has lost 
very near her all ; and she has gained nothing. 
What equivalent has Spain to give ? Alas ! she has 
already paid for her own ransom the fund of equi- 
valent, and a dreadful equivalent it is, to England 
and to herself. But I put Spain out of the question ; 
she is a province of the Jacobin empire, and she 
must make peace or war according to the orders she 
receives from the directory of assassins. In effect 
and substance, her crown is a fief of regicide. 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 95 

Whence then can the compensation be demanded ? 
Undoubtedly from that power which alone has made 
some conquests. That power is England. Will the 
allies then give away their ancient patrimony, that 
England may keep islands in the West Indies ? They 
never can protract the war in good earnest for that 
object; nor can they act in concert with us, in our 
refusal to grant anything towards their redemption. 
In that case we are thus situated. Either we must 
give Europe, bound hand and foot, to France ; or we 
must quit the West Indies without any one object, 
great or small, towards indemnity and security. I repeat 
it, without any advantage whatever : because, supposing 
that our conquest could comprise all that France ever 
possessed in the tropical America, it never can amount 
in any fair estimation to a fair equivalent for Holland, 
for the Austrian Netherlands, for the lower Germany, 
that is, for the whole ancient kingdom or circle of 
Burgundy, now under the yoke of regicide, to say 
nothing of almost all Italy under the same barbarous 
domination. If we treat in the present situation of 
things, we have nothing in our hands that can redeem 
Europe. Nor is the Emperor, as I have observed, 
more rich in the fund of equivalents. 

If we look to our stock in the eastern world, our 
most valuable and systematic acquisitions are made 
in that quarter. Is it from France they are made ? 
France has but one or two contemptible factories, 



96 Political Pamphlets 

subsisting by the offal of the private fortunes ot 
English individuals to support them, in any part of 
India. I look on the taking of the Cape of Good 
Hope as the securing of a post of great moment. It 
does honour to those who planned, and to those who 
executed, that enterprise : but I speak of it always as 
comparatively good ; as good as anything can be in 
a scheme of war that repels us from a centre, and 
employs all our forces where nothing can be finally 
decisive. But giving, as I freely give, every possible 
credit to these eastern conquests, I ask one question, 
— on whom are they made ? It is evident, that if we 
can keep our eastern conquests we keep them not at 
the expense of France, but at the expense of Holland 
our ally ; of Holland, the immediate cause of the 
war, the nation whom we had undertaken to protect, 
and not of the republic which it was our business to 
destroy. If we return the African and the Asiatic 
conquests, we put them into the hands of a nominal 
state (to that Holland is reduced) unable to retain 
them ; and which will virtually leave them under the 
direction of France. If we withhold them, Holland 
declines still more as a state. She loses so much 
carrying trade, and that means of keeping up the 
small degree of naval power she holds ; for which 
policy alone, and not for any commercial gain, she 
maintains the Cape, or any settlement beyond it. In 
that case, resentment, faction, and even necessity, will 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 97 

throw her more and more into the power of the new, 
mischievous republic. But on the probable state of 
Holland I shall say more, when in this correspond- 
ence I come to talk over with you the state in which 
any sort of Jacobin peace will leave all Europe. 

So far as to the East Indies. 

As to the West Indies, indeed as to either, if we 
look for matter of exchange in order to ransom 
Europe, it is easy to show that we have taken a 
terribly roundabout road. I cannot conceive, even 
if, for the sake of holding conquests there, we should 
refuse to redeem Holland, and the Austrian Nether- 
lands, and the hither Germany, that Spain, merely as 
she is Spain, (and forgetting that the regicide ambas- 
sador governs at Madrid,) will see, with perfect satis- 
faction, Great Britain sole mistress of the isles. In 
truth it appears to me, that, when we come to balance 
our account, we shall find in the proposed peace only 
the pure, simple, and unendowed charms of Jacobin 
amity. We shall have the satisfaction of knowing, 
that no blood or treasure has been spared by the 
allies for support of the regicide system. We shall 
reflect at leisure on one great truth, that it was ten 
times more easy totally to destroy the system itself, 
than, when established, it would be to reduce its 
power ; and that this republic, most formidable 
abroad, was of all things the weakest at home ; that 
her frontier was terrible, her interior feeble ; that it. 

H 



98 Political Pamphlets 

was matter of choice to attack her where she is invin- 
cible, and to spare her where she was ready to dis- 
solve by her own internal disorders. We shall reflect, 
that our plan was good neither for offence nor 
defence. 

It would not be at all difficult to prove, that an 
army of a hundred thousand men, horse, foot, and 
artillery, might have been employed against the 
enemy on the very soil which he has usurped, at a 
far less expense than has been squandered away upon 
tropical adventures. In these adventures it was not 
an enemy we had to vanquish, but a cemetery to 
conquer. In carrying on the war in the West Indies, 
the hostile sword is merciful ; the country in which 
we engage is the dreadful enemy. There the Euro- 
pean conqueror finds a cruel defeat in the very fruits 
of his success. Every advantage is but a new demand 
on England for recruits to the West Indian grave. 
In a West India war, the regicides have, for their 
troops, a race of fierce barbarians, to whom the 
poisoned air, in which our youth inhale certain death, 
is salubrity and life. To them the climate is the 
surest and most faithful of allies. 

Had we carried on the war on the side of France 
which looks towards the Channel or the Atlantic, we 
should have attacked our enemy on his weak and 
unarmed side. We should not have to reckon on 
the loss of a man who did not fall in battle. We 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 99 

should have an ally in the heart of the country, who, 
to our hundred thousand, would at one time have 
added eighty thousand men at the least, and all ani- 
mated by principle, by enthusiasm, and by vengeance ; 
motives which secured them to the cause in a very 
different manner from some of those allies whom we 
subsidised with millions. This ally, (or rather this 
principal in the war,) by the confession of the regicide 
himself, was more formidable to him than all his 
other foes united. Warring there, we should have 
led our arms to the capital of Wrong. Defeated, we 
could not fail (proper precautions taken) of a sure 
retreat. Stationary, and only supporting the royalists, 
an impenetrable barrier, an impregnable rampart, 
would have been formed between the enemy and his 
naval power. We are probably the only nation who 
have declined to act against an enemy, when it might 
have been done in his own country • and who having 
an armed, a powerful, and a long-victorious ally in 
that country, declined all effectual co-operation, and 
suffered him to perish for want of support. On the 
plan of a war in France, every advantage that our 
allies might obtain would be doubled in its effect. 
Disasters on the one side might have a fair chance of 
being compensated by victories on the other. Had 
we brought the main of our force to bear upon that 
quarter, all the operations of the British and Imperial 
crowns would have been combined. The war would 

[L.ofC. 



ioo Political Pamphlets 

have had system, correspondence, and a certain direc- 
tion. But as the war has been pursued, the operations 
of the two crowns have not the smallest degree of 
mutual bearing or relation. 

Had acquisitions in the West Indies been our 
object, on success in France, everything reasonable 
in those remote parts might be demanded with de- 
corum, and justice, and a sure effect. Well might 
we call for a recompence in America, for those 
services to which Europe owed its safety. Having 
abandoned this obvious policy connected with prin- 
ciple, we have seen the regicide power taking the 
reverse course, and making real conquests in the 
West Indies, to which all our dear-bought advantages 
(if we could hold them) are mean and contemptible. 
The noblest island within the tropics, worth all that 
we possess put together, is, by the vassal Spaniard, 
delivered into her hands. The island of Hispaniola 
(of which we have but one poor corner, by a slippery 
hold) is perhaps equal to England in extent, and in 
fertility is far superior. The part possessed by Spain, 
of that great island, made for the seat and centre of 
a tropical empire, was not improved, to be sure, as 
the French division had been, before it was systemati- 
cally destroyed by the cannibal republic ; but it is not 
only the far larger, but the far more salubrious and 
more fertile part. 

It was delivered into the hands of the barbarians 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 101 

without, as I can find, any public reclamation on our 
part, not only in contravention to one of the funda- 
mental treaties that compose the public law of Europe, 
but in defiance of the fundamental colonial policy of 
Spain herself. This part of the treaty of Utrecht was 
made for great general ends unquestionably; but whilst 
it provided for those general ends, it was in affirmance 
of that particular policy. It was not to injure, but 
to save Spain by making a settlement of her estate, 
which prohibited her to alienate to France. It is 
her policy not to see the balance of West Indian 
power overturned by France or by Great Britain. 
Whilst the monarchies subsisted, this unprincipled 
cession was what the influence of the elder branch of 
the house of Bourbon never dared to attempt on the 
younger : but cannibal terror has been more powerful 
than family influence. The Bourbon monarchy of 
Spain is united to the republic of France, by what 
may be truly called the ties of blood. 

By this measure the balance of power in the West 
Indies is totally destroyed. It has followed the 
balance of power in Europe. It is not alone what 
shall be left nominally to the assassins that is theirs. 
Theirs is the whole empire of Spain in America. 
That stroke finishes all. I should be glad to see our 
suppliant negotiator in the act of putting his feather 
to the ear of the directory, to make it unclinch the 
fist ; and, by his tickling, to charm that rich prize out 



102 Political Pamphlets 

of the iron gripe of robbery and ambition ! It does 
not require much sagacity to discern that no power 
wholly baffled and defeated in Europe can flatter 
itself with conquests in the West Indies. In that 
state of things it can neither keep nor hold. No ! 
It cannot even long make war if the grand bank and 
deposit of its force is at all in the West Indies. But 
here a scene opens to my view too important to pass 
by, perhaps too critical to touch. Is it possible that 
it should not present itself in all its relations to a mind 
habituated to consider either war or peace on a large 
scale, or as one whole ? 

Unfortunately other ideas have prevailed. A 
remote, an expensive, a murderous, and, in the end, 
an unproductive adventure, carried on upon ideas of 
mercantile knight-errantry, without any of the gener- 
ous wildness of Quixotism, is considered as sound, solid 
sense ; and a war in a wholesome climate, a war at 
our door, a war directly on the enemy, a war in the 
heart of his country, a war in concert with an internal 
ally, and in combination with the external, is regarded 
as folly and romance. 

My dear friend, I hold it impossible that these 
considerations should have escaped the statesmen on 
both sides of the water, and on both sides of the 
House of Commons. How a question of peace can 
be discussed without having them in view, I cannot 
imagine. If you or others see a way out of these 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 103 

difficulties I am happy. I see, indeed, a fund from 
whence equivalents will be proposed. I see it. But 
I cannot just now touch it. It is a question of high 
moment. It opens another Iliad of woes to Europe. 

Such is the time proposed for making a common 
political peace, to which no one circumstance is 
propitious. As to the grand principle of the peace, 
it is left, as if by common consent, wholly out of the 
question. 

Viewing things in this light, I have frequently 
sunk into a degree of despondency and dejection 
hardly to be described; yet out of the profoundest 
depths of this despair, an impulse, which I have in 
vain endeavoured to resist, has urged me to raise one 
feeble cry against this unfortunate coalition which is 
formed at home, in order to make a coalition with 
France, subversive of the whole ancient order of the 
world. No disaster of war, no calamity of season, 
could ever strike me with half the horror which I felt 
from what is introduced to us by this junction of 
parties, under the soothing name of peace. We are 
apt to speak of a low and pusillanimous spirit as the 
ordinary cause by which dubious wars terminated in 
humiliating treaties. It is here the direct contrary. 
I am perfectly astonished at the boldness of character, 
at the intrepidity of mind, the firmness of nerve, in 
those who are able with deliberation to face the perils 
of Jacobin fraternity. 



104 Political Pamphlets 

This fraternity is indeed so terrible in its nature, 
and in its manifest consequences, that there is no way 
of quieting our apprehensions about it, but by totally 
putting it out of sight, by substituting for it, through 
a sort of periphrasis, something of an ambiguous 
quality, and describing such a connexion under the 
terms of ' the usual relations of peace and amity.'' By 
this means the proposed fraternity is hustled in the 
crowd of those treaties, which imply no change in the 
public law of Europe, and which do not upon system 
affect the interior condition of nations. It is con- 
founded with those conventions in which matters of 
dispute among sovereign powers are compromised, by 
the taking off a duty more or less, by the surrender 
of a frontier town, or a disputed district, on the one side 
or the other ; by pactions in which the pretensions of 
families are settled, (as by a conveyancer, making 
family substitutions and successions,) without any 
alterations in the laws, manners, religion, privileges, 
and customs, of the cities, or territories, which are the 
subject of such arrangements. 

All this body of old conventions, composing the 
vast and voluminous collection called the corps 
diplomatique, forms the code or statute law, as the 
methodised reasonings of the great publicists and 
jurists from the digest and jurisprudence of the 
Christian world. In these treasures are to be found 
the usual relations of peace and amity in civilised 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 105 

Europe ; and there the relations of ancient France 
were to be found amongst the rest. 

The present system in France is not the ancient 
France. It is not the ancient France with ordinary 
ambition and ordinary means. It is not a new power 
of an old kind. It is a new power of a new species. 
When such a questionable shape is to be admitted 
for the first time into the brotherhood of Christendom, 
it is not a mere matter of idle curiosity to consider 
how far it is in its nature alliable with the rest, or 
whether ' the relations of peace and amity ' with this 
new state are likely to be of the same nature with the 
usual relations of the states of Europe. 

The Revolution in France had the relation of 
France to other nations as one of its principal objects. 
The changes made by that Revolution were not the 
better to accommodate her to the old and usual 
relations, but to produce new ones. The Revolution 
was made, not to make France free, but to make her 
formidable; not to make her a neighbour, but a 
mistress ; not to make her more observant of laws, 
but to put her in a condition to impose them. To 
make France truly formidable it was necessary that 
France should be new modelled. They, who have 
not followed the train of the late proceedings, have 
been led by deceitful representations (which deceit 
made a part in the plan) to conceive that this totally 
new model of a state, in which nothing escaped a 



106 Political Pamphlets 

change, was made with a view to its internal relations 
only. 

In the Revolution of France two sorts of men were 
principally concerned in giving a character and 
determination to its pursuits : the philosophers and 
the politicians. They took different ways, but they 
met in the same end. The philosophers had one 
predominant object, which they pursued with a 
fanatical fury, that is, the utter extirpation of religion. 
To that every question of empire was subordinate. 
They had rather domineer in a parish of atheists, than 
rule over a Christian world. Their temporal ambition 
was wholly subservient to their proselytising spirit, in 
which they were not exceeded by Mahomet himself. 

They, who have made but superficial studies in the 
natural history of the human mind, have been taught 
to look on religious opinions as the only cause of 
enthusiastic zeal and sectarian propagation. But 
there is no doctrine whatever, on which men can warm, 
that is not capable of the very same effect. The 
social nature of man impels him to propagate his 
principles, as much as physical impulses urge him to 
propagate his kind. The passions give zeal and 
vehemence. The understanding bestows design and 
system. The whole man moves under the discipline 
of his opinions. Religion is among the most power- 
ful causes of enthusiasm. When anything concerning 
it becomes an object of much meditation, it cannot be 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 107 

indifferent to the mind. They who do not love reli- 
gion, hate it. The rebels to God perfectly abhor the 
author of their being. They hate Him ' with all their 
heart, with all their mind, with all their soul, and with 
all their strength.' He never presents Himself to their 
thoughts but to menace and alarm them. They 
cannot strike the sun out of heaven, but they are able 
to raise a smouldering smoke that obscures Him from 
their own eyes. Not being able to revenge themselves 
on God, they have a delight in vicariously defacing, 
degrading, torturing, and tearing in pieces, His image 
in man. Let no one judge of them by what he has 
conceived of them, when they were not incorporated, 
and had no lead. They were then only passengers 
in a common vehicle. They were then carried along 
with the general motion of religion in the community, 
and, without being aware of it, partook of its influence. 
In that situation, at worst, their nature was left free 
to counterwork their principles. They despaired of 
giving any very general currency to their opinions. 
They considered them as a reserved privilege for the 
chosen few. But when the possibility of dominion, 
lead, and propagation, presented itself, and that the 
ambition, which before had so often made them hypo- 
crites, might rather gain than lose by a daring avowal 
of their sentiments, then the nature of this infernal 
spirit, which has ' evil for its good,' appeared in its 
full perfection. Nothing indeed but the possession 



108 Political Pamphlets 

of some power can with any certainty discover what 
at the bottom is the true character of any man. 
Without reading the speeches of Vergniaux, Francias 
of Nantz, Isnard, and some others of that sort, it 
would not be easy to conceive the passion, rancour, 
and malice of their tongues and hearts. They 
worked themselves up to a perfect phrensy against 
religion and all its professors. They tore the 
reputation of the clergy to pieces by their infuriated 
declamations and invectives, before they lacerated 
their bodies by their massacres. This fanatical 
atheism left out, we omit the principal feature in the 
French Revolution, and a principal consideration with 
regard to the effects to be expected from a peace 
with it. 

The other sort of men were the politicians. To 
them, who had little or not at all reflected on the 
subject, religion was in itself no object of love or 
hatred. They disbelieved it, and that was all. 
Neutral with regard to that object, they took the side 
which in the present state of things might best answer 
their purposes. They soon found that they could not 
do without the philosophers ; and the philosophers 
soon made them sensible that the destruction of 
religion was to supply them with means of conquest 
first at home, and then abroad. The philosophers 
were the active internal agitators, and supplied the 
spirit and principles : the second gave the practical 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 109 

direction. Sometimes the one predominated in the 
composition, sometimes the other. The only differ- 
ence between them was in the necessity of concealing 
the general design for a time, and in their dealing 
with foreign nations ; the fanatics going straight for- 
ward and openly, the politicians by the surer mode of 
zigzag. In the course of events this, among other 
causes, produced fierce and bloody contentions 
between them. But at the bottom they thoroughly 
agreed in all the objects of ambition and irreligion, and 
substantially in all the means of promoting these ends. 
Without question, to bring about the unexampled 
event of the French Revolution, the concurrence of 
a very great number of views and passions was 
necessary. In that stupendous work, no one principle, 
by which the human mind may have its faculties at 
once invigorated and depraved, was left unemployed ; 
but I can speak it to a certainty, and support it by 
undoubted proofs, that the ruling principle of those 
who acted in the Revolution as statesmen, had the 
exterior aggrandisement of France as their ultimate 
end in the most minute part of the internal changes 
that were made. We, who of late years have been 
drawn from an attention to foreign affairs by the 
importance of our domestic discussions, cannot easily 
form a conception of the general eagerness of the 
active and energetic part of the French nation, itself the 
most active and energetic of all nations, previous to its 



no Political Pamphlets 

Revolution, upon that subject. I am convinced that 
the foreign speculators in France, under the old 
government, were twenty to one of the same descrip- 
tion then or now in England ; and few of that 
description there were, who did not emulously set 
forward the Revolution. The whole official system, 
particularly in the diplomatic part, the regulars, the 
irregulars, down to the clerks in office, (a corps, without 
comparison, more numerous than the same amongst 
us,) co-operated in it. All the intriguers in foreign 
politics, all the spies, all the intelligencers, actually or 
late in function, all the candidates for that sort of 
employment, acted solely upon that principle. 

On that system of aggrandisement there was but one 
mind : but two violent factions arose about the 
means. The first wished France, diverted from the 
politics of the continent, to attend solely to her 
marine, to feed it by an increase of commerce, and 
thereby to overpower England on her own element. 
They contended, that if England were disabled, the 
powers on the continent would fall into their proper 
subordination ; that it was England which deranged 
the whole continental system of Europe. The others, 
who were by far the more numerous, though not the 
most outwardly prevalent at court, considered this 
plan for France as contrary to her genius, her 
situation, and her natural means. They agree as to 
the ultimate object, the reduction of the British power, 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace m 

and, if possible, its naval power ; but they considered 
an ascendency on the continent as a necessary 
preliminary to that undertaking. They argued, that 
the proceedings of England herself had proved the 
soundness of this policy. That her greatest and 
ablest statesmen had not considered the support of a 
continental balance against France as a deviation 
from the principle of her naval power, but as one of 
the most effectual modes of carrying it into effect. 
That such had been her policy ever since the 
Revolution, during which period the naval strength of 
Great Britain had gone on increasing in the direct 
ratio of her interference in the politics of the continent. 
With much stronger reason ought the politics of 
France to take the same direction ; as well for 
pursuing objects which her situation would dictate to 
her, though England had no existence, as for counter- 
acting the politics of that nation; to France con- 
tinental politics are primary ; they looked on them 
only of secondary consideration to England, and, 
however necessary, but as means necessary to an 
end. 

What is truly astonishing, the partisans of those 
two opposite systems were at once prevalent, and at 
once employed, and in the very same transactions — the 
one ostensibly, the other secretly, during the latter 
part of the reign of Louis XV. Nor was there one 
court in which an ambassador resided on the part 



112 



Political Pamphlets 



of the ministers, in which another, as a spy on him, 
did not also reside on the part of the king. They who 
pursued the scheme for keeping peace on the 
continent, and particularly with Austria, acting officially 
and publicly, the other faction counteracting and 
opposing them. These private agents were continu- 
ally going from their function to the Bastile, and from 
the Bastile to employment, and favour again. An 
inextricable cabal was formed, some of persons of 
rank, others of subordinates. But by this means the 
corps of politicians was augmented in number, and the 
whole formed a body of active, adventuring, ambitious, 
discontented people, despising the regular ministry, 
despising the courts at which they were employed, 
despising the court which employed them 

The unfortunate Louis the Sixteenth was not the first 
cause of the evil by which he suffered. He came to 
it, as to a sort of inheritance, by the false politics of 
his immediate predecessor. This system of dark and 
perplexed intrigue had come to its perfection before 
he came to the throne : and even then the Revolution 
stongly operated in all its causes. 

There was no point on which the discontented 
diplomatic politicians so bitterly arraigned their 
cabinet, as for the decay of French influence in all 
others. From quarrelling with the court, they began 
to complain of monarchy itself, as a system of 
government too variable for any regular plan of 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 113 

national aggrandisement. They observed, that in 
that sort of regimen too much depended on the 
personal character of the prince ; that the vicissitudes 
produced by the succession of princes of a different 
character, and even the vicissitudes produced in the 
same man, by the different views and inclinations 
belonging to youth, manhood, and age, disturbed and 
distracted the policy of a country made by nature for 
extensive empire, or, what was still more to their taste, 
for that sort of general over-ruling influence which 
prepared empire or supplied the place of it. They 
had continually in their hands the observations of 
Machiavel 'on Livy. They had Montesquieu 7 s Grandeur 
et Decadence des Romains as a manual 5 and they 
compared, with mortification, the systematic proceed- 
ings of a Roman senate with the fluctuations of a 
monarchy. They observed the very small additions 
of territory which all the power of France, actuated 
by all the ambition of France, had acquired in two 
centuries. The Romans had frequently acquired 
more in a single year. They severely and in every 
part of it criticised the reign of Louis XIV., whose 
irregular and desultory ambition had more provoked 
than endangered Europe. Indeed, they who will be 
at the pains of seriously considering the history of 
that period will see that those French politicians had 
some reason. They who will not take the trouble of 
reviewing it through all its wars and all its negotiations, 

1 



ii4 Political Pamphlets 

will consult the short but judicious criticism of the 
Marquis de Montalembert on that subject. It may 
be read separately from his ingenious system of 
fortification and military defence, on the practical 
merit of which I am unable to form a judgment. 

The diplomatic politicians of whom I speak, and 
who formed by far the majority in that class, made 
disadvantageous comparisons even between their 
more legal and formalising monarchy, and the 
monarchies of other states, as a system of power and 
influence. They observed that France not only 
lost ground herself, but, through the languor and 
unsteadiness of her pursuits, and from her aiming 
through commerce at naval force which she never 
could attain without losing more on one side than she 
could gain on the other, that three great powers, each 
of them (as military states) capable of balancing her, 
had grown up on the continent. Russia and Prussia 
had been created almost within memory ; and Austria, 
though not a new power, and even curtailed in 
territory, was, by the very collision in which she lost 
that territory, greatly improved in her military 
discipline and force. During the reign of Maria 
Theresa the interior economy of the country was 
made more to correspond with the support of great 
armies than formerly it had been. As to Prussia, a 
merely military power, they observed that one war had 
enriched her with as considerable a conquest as 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 115 

France had acquired in centuries. Russia had 
broken the Turkish power by which Austria might be, 
as formerly she had been, balanced in favour of 
France. They felt it with pain, that the two northern 
powers of Sweden and Denmark were in general 
under the sway of Russia ; or that, at best, France 
kept up a very doubtful conflict, with many fluctua- 
tions of fortune, and at an enormous expense, in 
Sweden. In Holland, the French party seemed, if 
not extinguished, at least utterly obscured, and kept 
under by a stadtholder, leaning for support sometimes 
on Great Britain, sometimes on Prussia, sometimes 
on both, never on France. Even the spreading of 
the Bourbon family had become merely a family ac- 
commodation; and had little effect on the national 
politics. This alliance, they said, extinguished Spain 
by destroying all its energy, without adding any- 
thing to the real power of France in the accession of 
the forces of its great rival. In Italy, the same 
family accommodation, the same national insig- 
nificance, were equally visible. What cure for the 
radical weakness of the French monarchy, to which 
all the means which wit could devise, or nature and 
fortune could bestow, towards universal empire, was 
not of force to give life, or vigour, or consistency, — 
but in a Republic? Out the word came; and it 
never went back. 

Whether they reasoned right or wrong, or that 



n6 Political Pamphlets 

there was some mixture of right and wrong in their 
reasoning, I am sure, that in this manner they felt and 
reasoned. The different effects of a great military 
and ambitious republic, and of a monarchy of the 
same description, were constantly in their mouths. 
The principle was ready to operate when oppor- 
tunities should offer, which few of them indeed 
foresaw in the extent in which they were afterwards 
presented; but these opportunities, in some degree 
or other, they all ardently wished for. 

When I was in Paris in 1773, the treaty of 1756 
between Austria and France was deplored as a 
national calamity ; because it united France in friend- 
ship with a power at whose expense alone they could 
hope any continental aggrandisement. When the 
first partition of Poland was made, in which France 
had no share, and which had further aggrandised 
every one of the three powers of which they were 
most jealous, I found them in a perfect phrensy of 
rage and indignation : not that they were hurt at the 
shocking and uncoloured violence and injustice of 
that partition, but at the debility, improvidence, and 
want of activity, in their government, in not preventing 
it as a means of aggrandisement to their rivals, or in 
not contriving, by exchanges of some kind or other, 
to obtain their share of advantage from that robbery. 

In that or nearly in that state of things and of 
opinions, came the Austrian match ; which promised 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 117 

to draw the knot, as afterwards in effect it did, still 
more closely between the old rival houses. This 
added exceedingly to their hatred and contempt of 
their monarchy. It was for this reason that the late 
glorious queen, who on all accounts was formed to 
produce general love and admiration, and whose life 
was as mild and beneficent as her death was beyond 
example great and heroic, became so very soon and 
so very much the object of an implacable rancour, 
never to be extinguished but in her blood. When I 
wrote my letter in answer to M. de Menonville, in the 
beginning of January, 1791, I had good reason for 
thinking that this description of revolutionists did not 
so early nor so steadily point their murderous designs 
at the martyr king as at the royal heroine. It was 
accident, and the momentary depression of that part 
of the faction, that gave to the husband the happy 
priority in death. 

From this their restless desire of an over-ruling 
influence, they bent a very great part of their designs 
and efforts to revive the old French party, which was 
a democratic party in Holland, and to make a 
revolution there. They were happy at the troubles 
which the singular imprudence of Joseph the Second 
had stirred up in the Austrian Netherlands. They 
rejoiced when they saw him irritate his subjects, 
profess philosophy, send away the Dutch garrisons, 
and dismantle his fortifications. As to Holland, 



u8 Political Pamphlets 

they never forgave either the king or the ministry, for 
suffering that object, which they justly looked on as 
principal in their design of reducing the power of 
England, to escape out of their hands. This was the 
true secret of the commercial treaty, made, on their 
part, against all the old rules and principles of 
commerce, with a view of diverting the English 
nation, by a pursuit of immediate profit, from an 
attention to the progress of France in its designs 
upon that republic. The system of the economists, 
which led to the general opening of commerce, 
facilitated that treaty, but did not produce it. They 
were in despair when they found that by the vigour 
of Mr. Pitt, supported in this point by Mr. Fox and 
the opposition, the object to which they had sacrificed 
their manufactures was lost to their ambition. 

This eager desire of raising France from the 
condition into which she had fallen, as they conceived, 
from her monarchical imbecility, had been the main- 
spring of their precedent interference in that unhappy 
American quarrel, the bad effects of which to this 
nation have not, as yet, fully disclosed themselves. 
These sentiments had been long lurking in their 
breasts, though their views were only discovered now 
and then, in heat and as by escapes ; but on this 
occasion they exploded suddenly. They were pro- 
fessed with ostentation and propagated with zeal. 
These sentiments were not produced, as some think, 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 119 

by their American alliance. The American alliance 
was produced by their republican principles and repub- 
lican policy. This new relation undoubtedly did much. 
The discourses and cabals that it produced, the 
intercourse that it established, and, above all, the 
example, which made it seem practicable to establish 
a republic in a great extent of country, finished the 
work, and gave to that part of the revolutionary 
faction a degree of strength which required other 
energies than the late king possessed, to resist, or 
even to restrain. It spread everywhere ; but it was 
nowhere more prevalent than in the heart of the 
court. The palace of Versailles, by its language, 
seemed a forum of democracy. To have pointed out 
to most of those politicians, from their dispositions and 
movements, what has since happened, the fall of their 
own monarchy, of their own laws, of their own religion, 
would have been to furnish a motive the more for 
pushing forward a system on which they considered all 
these things as encumbrances. Such in truth they 
were. And we have seen them succeed not only in 
the destruction of their monarchy, but in all the objects 
of ambition that they proposed from that destruction. 
When I contemplate the scheme on which France 
is formed, and when I compare it with these systems, 
with which it is, and ever must be, in conflict, those 
things which seem as defects in her polity are the 
very things which make me tremble. The states of 



I2 o Political Pamphlets 

the Christian world have grown up to their present 
magnitude in a great length of time, and by a great 
variety of accidents. They have been improved to 
what we see them with greater or less degrees of 
felicity and skill. Not one of them has been formed 
upon a regular plan or with any unity of design. As 
their constitutions are not systematical, they have not 
been directed to any peculiar end, eminently distin- 
guished, and superseding every other. The objects 
which they embrace are of the greatest possible 
variety, and have become in a manner infinite. In 
all these old countries the state has been made to 
the people, and not the people conformed to the 
state. Every state has pursued not only every sort of 
social advantage, but it has cultivated the welfare of 
every individual. His wants, his wishes, even his 
tastes, have been consulted. This comprehensive 
scheme virtually produced a degree of personal 
liberty in forms the most adverse to it. That liberty 
was found, under monarchies styled absolute, in a 
degree unknown to the ancient commonwealths. 
From hence the powers of all our modern states meet, 
in all their movements, with some obstruction. It 
is therefore no wonder, that, when these states are to 
be considered as machines to operate for some one 
great end, this dissipated and balanced force is not 
easily concentred, or made to bear with the whole 
force of the nation upon one point. 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 121 

The British state is, without question, that which 
pursues the greatest variety of ends, and is the least 
disposed to sacrifice any one of them to another, or 
to the whole. It aims at taking in the entire circle 
of human desires, and securing for them their fair 
enjoyment. Our legislature has been ever closely 
connected, in its most efficient part, with individual 
feeling, and individual interest. Personal liberty, the 
most lively of these feelings and the most important 
of these interests, which in other European countries 
has rather arisen from the system of manners and the 
habitudes of life than from the laws of the state, (in 
which it flourished more from neglect than attention,) 
in England has been a direct object of government. 

On this principle England would be the weakest 
power in the whole system. Fortunately, however, 
the great riches of this kingdom, arising from a variety 
of causes, and the disposition of the people, which is 
as great to spend as to accumulate, has easily afforded 
a disposable surplus that gives a mighty momentum 
to the state. This difficulty, with these advantages 
to overcome it, has called forth the talents of the 
English financiers, who, by the surplus of industry 
poured out by prodigality, have outdone everything 
which has been accomplished in other nations. The 
present minister has outdone his predecessors ; and, 
as a minister of revenue, is far above my power of 
praise. But still there are cases in which England 



122 Political Pamphlets 

feels more than several others (though they all feel) 
the perplexity of an immense body of balanced 
advantages, and of individual demands, and of some 
irregularity in the whole mass. 

France differs essentially from all those govern- 
ments, which are formed without system, which exist 
by habit, and which are confused with the multitude, 
and with the complexity of their pursuits. What now 
stands as government in France is struck out at a 
heat. The design is wicked, immoral, impious, 
oppressive ; but it is spirited and daring ; it is system- 
atic ; it is simple in its principle ; it has unity and 
consistency in perfection. In that country entirely 
to cut off a branch of commerce, to extinguish a 
manufacture, to destroy the circulation of money, to 
violate credit, to suspend the course of agriculture, 
even to burn a city, or to lay waste a province of their 
own, does not cost them a moment's anxiety. To 
them the will, the wish, the want, the liberty, the toil, 
the blood of individuals, is as nothing. Individuality 
is left out of their scheme of government. The state 
is all in all. Everything is referred to the production 
of force ; afterwards, everything is trusted to the use 
of it. It is military in its principle, in its maxims, in 
its spirit, and in all its movements. The state has 
dominion and conquest for its sole objects ; dominion 
over minds by proselytism, over bodies by arms. 

Thus constituted, with an immense body of natural 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 123 

means which are lessened in their amount only to be 
increased in their effect, France has, since the 
accomplishment of the Revolution, a complete unity 
in its direction. It has destroyed every resource of 
the state which depends upon opinion and the good- 
will of individuals. The riches of convention dis- 
appear. The advantages of nature in some measure 
remain : even these, I admit, are astonishingly less- 
ened j the command over what remains is complete 
and absolute. We go about asking when assignats 
will expire, and we laugh at the last price of them. 
But what signifies the fate of those tickets of despotism? 
The despotism will find despotic means of supply. 
They have found the short cut to the productions of 
nature, while others, in pursuit of them, are obliged 
to wind through the labyrinth of a very intricate state 
of society. They seize upon the fruit of the labour ; 
they seize upon the labourer himself. Were France 
but half of what it is in population, in compactness, 
in applicability of its force, situated as it is, and 
being what it is, it would be too strong for most of 
the states of Europe, constituted as they are, and 
proceeding as they proceed. Would it be wise to 
estimate what the world of Europe, as well as the 
world of Asia, had to dread from Genghiz Khan, upon 
a contemplation of the resources of the cold and 
barren spot in the remotest Tartary, from whence first 
issued that scourge of the human race? Ought we 



i24 Political Pamphlets 

to judge from the excise and stamp duties of the 
rocks, or from the paper circulation of the sands of 
Arabia, the power by which Mahomet and his tribes 
laid hold at once on the two most powerful empires 
of the world ; beat one of them totally to the ground, 
broke to pieces the other, and, in not much longer 
space of time than I have lived, overturned govern- 
ments, laws, manners, religion, and extended an 
empire from the Indus to the Pyrenees ? 

Material resources never have supplied, nor ever 
can supply, the want of unity in design, and constancy 
in pursuit But unity in design, and perseverance 
and boldness in pursuit, have never wanted resources, 
and never will. We have not considered as we ought 
the dreadful energy of a state in which the property 
has nothing to do with the government. Reflect, my 
dear Sir, reflect again and again, on a government, in 
which the property is in complete subjection, and 
where nothing rules but the mind of desperate men. 
The condition of a commonwealth not governed by 
its property was a combination of things which the 
learned and ingenious speculator Harrington, who 
has tossed about society into all forms, never could 
imagine to be possible. We have seen it ; the world 
has felt it ; and if the world will shut their eyes 
to this state of things, they will feel it more. The 
rulers there have found their resources in crimes. 
The discovery is dreadful ; the mine exhaustless. 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 125 

They have everything to gain, and they have nothing 
to lose. They have a boundless inheritance in hope ; 
and there is no medium for them, betwixt the 
highest elevation, and death with infamy. Never 
can they, who, from the miserable servitude of the 
desk, have been raised to empire, again submit to the 
bondage of a starving bureau, or the profit of copying 
music, or writing plaidoyers by the sheet. It has 
made me often smile in bitterness, when I have 
heard talk of an indemnity to such men, provided 
they return to their allegiance. 

From all this, what is my inference ? It is, that 
this new system of robbery in France cannot be 
rendered safe by any art ; that it must be destroyed, 
or that it will destroy all Europe ; that to destroy that 
enemy, by some means or other, the force opposed 
to it should be made to bear some analogy and 
resemblance to the force and spirit which that system 
exerts ; that war ought to be made against it, in its 
vulnerable parts. These are my inferences. In one 
word, with this republic nothing independent can 
co-exist. The errors of Louis XVI. were more 
pardonable to prudence, than any of those of the 
same kind into which the allied courts may fall. 
They have the benefit of his dreadful example. 

The unhappy Louis XVI. was a man of the best 
intentions that probably ever reigned. He was by 
no means deficient in talents. He had a most 



126 Political Pamphlets 

laudable desire to supply by general reading, and even 
by the acquisition of elemental knowledge, an 
education in all points originally defective; but 
nobody told him, (and it was no wonder he should 
not himself divine it,) that the world of which he 
read, and the world in which he lived, were no longer 
the same. Desirous of doing everything for the best, 
fearful of cabal, distrusting his own judgment, he 
sought his ministers of all kinds upon public testimony. 
But as courts are the field for caballers, the public 
is the theatre for mountebanks and impostors. The 
cure for both those evils is in the discernment of 
the prince. But an accurate and penetrating 
discernment is what in a young prince could not be 
looked for. 

His conduct in its principle was not unwise ; but, 
like most other of his well-meant designs, it failed in 
his hands. It failed partly from mere ill-fortune, to 
which speculators are rarely pleased to assign that 
very large share to which she is justly entitled in all 
human affairs. The failure, perhaps, in part was 
owing to his suffering his system to be vitiated and 
disturbed by those intrigues, which it is, humanly 
speaking, impossible wholly to prevent in courts, or 
indeed under any form of government. However, 
with these aberrations, he gave himself over to a 
succession of the statesmen of public opinion. In 
other things he thought that he might be a king on 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 127 

the terms of his predecessors. He was conscious of 
the purity of his heart and the general good tendency 
of his government. He flattered himself, as most 
men in his situation will, that he might consult his 
ease without danger to his safety. It is not at all 
wonderful that both he and his ministers, giving 
way abundantly in other respects to innovation, 
should take up in policy with the tradition of their 
monarchy. Under his ancestors the monarchy had 
subsisted, and even been strengthened, by the 
generation or support of republics. First, the Swiss 
republics grew under the guardianship of the French 
monarchy. The Dutch republics were hatched and 
cherished under the same incubation. Afterwards, a 
republican constitution was, under the influence of 
France, established in the empire against the pre- 
tensions of its chief. Even whilst the monarchy of 
France, by a series of wars and negotiations, and 
lastly by the treaties of Westphalia, had obtained the 
establishment of the Protestants in Germany as a law 
of the empire, the same monarchy under Louis XIII. 
had force enough to destroy the republican system of 
the Protestants at home. 

Louis XVI. was a diligent reader of history. But 
the very lamp of prudence blinded him. The guide 
of human life led him astray. A silent revolution in 
the moral world preceded the political, and prepared 
it. It became of more importance than ever what 



128 Political Pamphlets 

examples were given, and what measures were adopted. 
Their causes no longer lurked in the recesses of 
cabinets, or in the private conspiracies of the factious. 
They were no longer to be controlled by the force 
and influence of the grandees, who formerly had been 
able to stir up troubles by their discontents, and to 
quiet them by their corruption. The chain of 
subordination, even in cabal and sedition, was broken 
in its most important links. It was no longer the 
great and the populace. Other interests were formed, 
other dependencies, other connexions, other communi- 
cations. The middle classes had swelled far beyond 
their former proportion. Like whatever is the most 
effectively rich and great in society, these classes 
became the seat of all the active politics ; and the 
preponderating weight to decide on them. There 
were all the energies by which fortune is acquired ; 
there the consequence of their success. There were 
all the talents which assert their pretensions, and are 
impatient of the place which settled society prescribes 
to them. These descriptions had got between the 
great and the populace; and the influence on the 
lower classes was with them. The spirit of ambition 
had taken possession of this class as violently as ever 
it had done of any other. They felt the importance 
of this situation. The correspondence of the monied 
and the mercantile world, the literary intercourse of 
academies, but, above all, the press, of which they 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 129 

had in a manner entire possession, made a kind of 
electric communication everywhere. The press in 
reality has made every government, in its spirit, almost 
democratic. Without it the great, the first movements 
in this Revolution could not, perhaps, have been 
given. But the spirit of ambition, now for the first 
time connected with the spirit of speculation, was not 
to be restrained at will. There was no longer any 
means of arresting a principle in its course. When 
Louis XVI., under the influence of the enemies to 
monarchy, meant to found but one republic, he set up 
two. When he meant to take away half the crown 
of his neighbour, he lost the whole of his own. 
Louis XVI. could not with impunity countenance a 
new republic : yet between his throne and that 
dangerous lodgment for an enemy, which he had 
erected, he had the whole Atlantic for a ditch. He 
had for an out-work the English nation itself, friendly 
to liberty, adverse to that mode of it. He was 
surrounded by a rampart of monarchies, most of them 
allied to him, and generally under his influence. Yet 
even thus secured, a republic erected under his 
auspices, and dependent on his power, became fatal 
to his throne. The very money which he had lent 
to support this republic, by a good faith, which to 
him operated as perfidy, was punctually paid to his 
enemies, and became a resource in the hands of his 
assassins. 

K 



130 Political Pamphlets 

With this example before their eyes, do any 
ministers in England, do any ministers in Austria, 
really flatter themselves that they can erect, not on the 
remote shores of the Atlantic, but in their view, in their 
vicinity, in absolute contact with one of them, not a 
commercial but a martial republic — a republic not of 
simple husbandmen or fishermen, but of intriguers, 
and of warriors — a republic of a character the most 
restless, the most enterprising, the most impious, the 
most fierce and bloody, the most hypocritical and per- 
fidious, the most bold and daring, that ever has been 
seen, or indeed that can be conceived to exist, without 
bringing on their own certain ruin ? 

Such is the republic to which we are going to give 
a place in civilised fellowship : the republic, which, 
with joint consent, we are going to establish in the 
centre of Europe, in a post that overlooks and 
commands every other state, and which eminently 
confronts and menaces this kingdom. 

You cannot fail to observe that I speak as if the 
allied powers were actually consenting, and not 
compelled by events to the establishment of this 
faction in France. The words have not escaped me. 
You will hereafter naturally expect that I should 
make them good. But whether in adopting this 
measure we are madly active, or weakly passive, or 
pusillanimously panic struck, the effects will be the 
same. You may call this faction, which has eradicated 



Second Letter on a Regicide Peace 131 

the monarchy, — expelled the proprietary, persecuted 
religion, and trampled upon law, — you may call 
this France if you please : but of the ancient France 
nothing remains but its central geography ; its 
iron frontier '; its spirit of ambition ; its audacity of 
enterprise ; its perplexing intrigue. These, and these 
alone, remain : and they remain heightened in their 
principle and augmented in their means. All the 
former correctives, whether of virtue or of weakness, 
which existed in the old monarchy, are gone. No 
single new corrective is to be found in the whole 
body of the new institutions. How should such a 
thing be found there, when everything has been 
chosen with care and selection to forward all those 
ambitious designs and dispositions, not to control 
them ? The whole is a body of ways and means 
for the supply of dominion, without one heterogeneous 
particle in it. 

Here I suffer you to breathe, and leave to your 
meditation what has occurred to me on the genius and 
character of the French Revolution. From having 
this before us, we may be better able to determine on 
the first question I proposed, that is, how far nations, 
called foreign, are likely to be affected with the 
system established within that territory. I intended 
to proceed next on the question of her facilities, 
from the internal state of other nations, and particularly 
of this, for obtaining her ends : but I ought to be 



i$ 2 Political Pamphlets 

aware that my notions are controverted. — I mean, 
therefore, in my next letter, to take notice of what, in 
that way, has been recommended to me as the most 
deserving of notice. In the examination of those 
pieces, I shall have occasion to discuss some others 
of the topics to which I have called your attention. 
You know that the letters which I now send to the 
press, as well as a part of what is to follow, have been 
in their substance long since written. A circumstance 
which your partiality alone could make of importance 
to you, but which to the public is of no importance 
at all, retarded their appearance. The late events 
which press upon us obliged me to make some addi- 
tions; but no substantial change in the matter. 

This discussion, my friend, will be long. But the 
matter is serious ; and if ever the fate of the world 
could be truly said to depend on a particular 
measure, it is upon this peace. For the present, 
farewell. 



V.— 'PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS' 
By Sydney Smith 

(letters II., VI., VII., IX.) 

(The pamphleteering spirit is strong in almost 
all Sydney Smith! s ' Contributions to the Edinburgh 
Review,' but the form and subjects of those contributions 
exclude them here. Of his two great pamphlet issues 
proper, Peter Plymley's Letters and those To Arch- 
deacon Singleton, the former are, though perhaps of 
less't polished and perfect wit than the latter, more 
distinctly political, and have more of that diable au 
corps Iwhich Voltaire considered necessary to success in 
the arts. They have also the advantage that, while 
the Letters to Archdeacon Singleton, though not an 
avowed recantation, are in the nature of a palinode — 
always an awkward thing — Plymley is frankly and 
confidently, not to say wantonly, aggressive. These 
Letters, ten in number, were written just after the 
fall of the mainly Whig Ministry of ' All the Talents,' 
to which Sydney had been indebted for his prefer- 



134 Political Pamphlets 

ment of Foston, and which lost its position not least 
owing to its intended support of the c Catholic ' claims. 
Those claims were not admitted for twenty years later ; 
and Sydney's advocacy of the??i was regarded as a little 
too exuberant by some even of his own party. But there 
is no doubt that the Letters had a great influence in 
laughing if not in arguing sections of the public round 
to the Emancipation side.) 

Letter II 

Dear Abraham — The Catholic not respect an oath ! 
why not ? What upon earth has kept him out of Par- 
liament, or excluded him from all the offices whence 
he is excluded, but his respect for oaths ? There is no 
law which prohibits a Catholic to sit in Parliament. 
There could be no such law; because it is impossible to 
find out what passes in the interior of any man's mind. 
Suppose it were in contemplation to exclude all men 
from certain offices who contended for the legality of 
taking tithes : the only mode of discovering that 
fervid love of decimation which I know you to possess 
would be to tender you an oath " against that damnable 
doctrine, that it is lawful for a spiritual man to take, 
abstract, appropriate, subduct, or lead away the tenth 
calf, sheep, lamb, ox, pigeon, duck," etc., etc., etc., and 
every other animal that ever existed, which of course 
the lawyers would take care to enumerate. Now this 



Peter Plymley's Letters 135 

oath I am sure you would rather die than take ; and 
so the Catholic is excluded from Parliament because 
he will not swear that he disbelieves the leading doc- 
trines of his religion ! The Catholic asks you to 
abolish some oaths which oppress him ; your answer 
is that he does not respect oaths. Then why subject 
him to the test of oaths ? The oaths keep him out 
of Parliament; why, then, he respects them. Turn 
which way you will, either your laws are nugatory, or 
the Catholic is bound by religious obligations as you 
are ; but no eel in the well-sanded fist of a cook-maid, 
upon the eve of being skinned, ever twisted and writhed 
as an orthodox parson does when he is compelled by 
the gripe of reason to admit anything in favour of a 
dissenter. 

I will not dispute with you whether the Pope be or 
be not the Scarlet Lady of Babylon. I hope it is not 
so ; because I am afraid it will induce His Majesty's 
Chancellor of the Exchequer to introduce several 
severe bills against popery, if that is the case ; and 
though he will have the decency to appoint a previous 
committee of inquiry as to the fact, the committee 
will be garbled, and the report inflammatory. Leav- 
ing this to be settled as he pleases to settle it, I wish 
to inform you, that, previously to the bill last passed 
in favour of the Catholics, at the suggestion of Mr. 
Pitt, and for his satisfaction, the opinions of six of the 
most celebrated of the foreign Catholic universities 



136 Political Pamphlets 

were taken as to the right of the Pope to interfere in 
the temporal concerns of any country. The answer 
cannot possibly leave the shadow of a doubt, even in 
the mind of Baron Maseres ; and Dr. Rennel would 
be compelled to admit it, if three Bishops lay dead at 
the very moment the question were put to him. To 
this answer might be added also the solemn declara- 
tion and signature of all the Catholics in Great Britain. 

I should perfectly agree with you, if the Catholics 
admitted such a dangerous dispensing power in the 
hands of the Pope ; but they all deny it, and laugh at 
it, and are ready to abjure it in the most decided 
manner you can devise. They obey the Pope as the 
spiritual head of their Church ; but are you really so 
foolish as to be imposed upon by mere names ? What 
matters it the seven-thousandth part of a farthing who 
is the spiritual head of any Church ? Is not Mr. 
Wilberforce at the head of the Church of Clapham ? 
Is not Dr. Letsom at the head of the Quaker Church ? 
Is not the General Assembly at the head of the Church 
of Scotland ? How is the government disturbed by 
these many-headed Churches ? or in what way is the 
power of the Crown augmented by this almost nominal 
dignity ? 

The King appoints a fast-day once a year, and he 
makes the bishops : and if the government would take 
half the pains to keep the Catholics out of the arms of 
France that it does to widen Temple Bar, or improve 



Peter Plymley's Letters 137 

Snow Hill, the King would get into his hands the 
appointments of the titular Bishops of Ireland. Both 

Mr. C 's sisters enjoy pensions more than sufficient 

to place the two greatest dignitaries of the Irish 
Catholic Church entirely at the disposal of the Crown. 
Everybody who knows Ireland knows perfectly well, 
that nothing would be easier, with the expenditure of a 
little money, than to preserve enough of the ostensible 
appointment in the hands of the Pope to satisfy the 
scruples of the Catholics, while the real nomination 
remained with the Crown. But, as I have before 
said, the moment the very name of Ireland is men- 
tioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common 
feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and 
to act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of 
idiots. 

Whatever your opinion may be of the follies of the 
Roman Catholic religion, remember they are the follies 
of four millions of human beings, increasing rapidly 
in numbers, wealth, and intelligence, who, if firmly 
united with this country, would set at defiance the 
power of France, and if once wrested from their 
alliance with England, would in three years render its 
existence as an independent nation absolutely impos- 
sible. You speak of danger to the Establishment : I 
request to know when the Establishment was ever so 
much in danger as when Hoche was in Bantry Bay, 
and whether all the books of Bossuet, or the arts of 



1 38 Political Pamphlets 

the Jesuits, were half so terrible ? Mr. Perceval and 
his parsons forget all this, in their horror lest twelve 
or fourteen old women may be converted to holy water 
and Catholic nonsense. They never see that, while 
they are saving these venerable ladies from perdition, 
Ireland may be lost, England broken down, and the 
Protestant Church, with all its deans, prebendaries, 
Percevals, and Rennels, be swept into the vortex of 
oblivion. 

Do not, I beseech you, ever mention to me again the 
name of Dr. Duigenan. I have been in every corner 
of Ireland, and have studied its present strength and 
condition with no common labour. Be assured Ireland 
does not contain at this moment less than five millions 
of people. There were returned in the year 1791 
to the hearth tax 701,000 houses, and there is no 
kind of question that there were about 50,000 houses 
omitted in that return. Taking, however, only the 
number returned for the tax, and allowing the average 
of six to a house (a very small average for a potato-fed 
people), this brings the population to 4,200,000 people 
in the year 1791 : and it can be shown from the 
clearest evidence (and Mr. Newenham in his book 
shows it), that Ireland for the last fifty years has in- 
creased in its population at the rate of 50 or 60,000 
per annum ; which leaves the present population of 
Ireland at about five millions, after every possible 
deduction for existing circumstances ; just and necessary 



Peter Plymleys Letters 139 

wars, monstrous and unnatural rebellions, and all other 
sources of human destruction. Of this population, 
two out of ten are Protestants ; and the half of the 
Protestant population are Dissenters, and as inimical 
to the Church as the Catholics themselves. In this 
state of things thumbscrews and whipping — admirable 
engines of policy as they must be considered to be — 
will not ultimately avail. The Catholics will hang 
over you ; they will watch for the moment, and com- 
pel you hereafter to give them ten times as much, 
against your will, as they would now be contented 
with, if it were voluntarily surrendered. Remember 
what happened in the American war, when Ireland 
compelled you to give her everything she asked, and 
to renounce, in the most explicit manner, your claim 
of Sovereignty over her. God Almighty grant the 
folly of these present men may not bring on such 
another crisis of public affairs ! 

What are your dangers which threaten the Estab- 
lishment ? — Reduce this declamation to a point, and 
let us understand what you mean. The most ample 
allowance does not calculate that there would be more 
than twenty members who were Roman Catholics in 
one house, and ten in the other, if the Catholic eman- 
cipation were carried into effect. Do you mean that 
these thirty members would bring in a bill to take 
away the tithes from the Protestant, and to pay them 
to the Catholic clergy ? Do you mean that a Catholic 



140 Political Pamphlets 

general would march his army into the House of Com- 
mons, and purge it of Mr. Perceval and Dr. Duigenan ? 
or, that the theological writers would become all of 
a sudden more acute or more learned, if the present 
civil incapacities were removed? Do you fear for 
your tithes, or your doctrines, or your person, or the 
English Constitution ? Every fear, taken separately, 
is so glaringly absurd, that no man has the folly or 
the boldness to state it. Every one conceals his 
ignorance, or his baseness, in a stupid general panic, 
which, when called on, he is utterly incapable of 
explaining. Whatever you think of the Catholics, 
there they are — you cannot get rid of them ; your 
alternative is to give them a lawful place for stating 
their grievances, or an unlawful one : if you do not 
admit them to the House of Commons, they will hold 
their parliament in Potatoe Place, Dublin, and be ten 
times as violent and inflammatory as they would be in 
Westminster. Nothing would give me such an idea 
of security as to see twenty or thirty Catholic gentle- 
men in Parliament, looked upon by all the Catholics 
as the fair and proper organ of their party. I should 
have thought it the height of good fortune that such 
a wish existed on their part, and the very essence of 
madness and ignorance to reject it. Can you murder 
the Catholics ? Can you neglect them ? They are 
too numerous for both these expedients. What re- 
mains to be done is obvious to every human being — 



Peter Plymley's Letters 141 

but to that man who, instead of being a Methodist 
preacher, is, for the curse of us and our children, and 
for the ruin of Troy and the misery of good old Priam 
and his sons, become a legislator and a politician. 

A distinction, I perceive, is taken by one of the 
most feeble noblemen in Great Britain, between perse- 
cution and the deprivation of political power ; whereas, 
there is no more distinction between these two things 
than there is between him who makes the distinction 
and a booby. If I strip off the relic-covered jacket 
of a Catholic, and give him twenty stripes ... I per- 
secute ; if I say, Everybody in the town where you 
live shall be a candidate for lucrative and honourable 
offices, but you, who are a Catholic ... I do not 
persecute ! What barbarous nonsense is this ! as if 
degradation was not as great an evil as bodily pain or 
as severe poverty : as if I could not be as great a 
tyrant by saying, You shall not enjoy — as by saying, 
You shall suffer. The English, I believe, are as 
truly religious as any nation in Europe : I know no 
greater blessing ; but it carries with it this evil in its 
train, that any villain who will bawl out, ' The Church 
is in danger ! ' may get a place and a good pension ; 
and that any administration who will do the same 
thing may bring a set of men into power who, at a 
moment of stationary and passive piety, would be 
hooted by the very boys in the streets. But it is not 
all religion ; it is, in great part, the narrow and ex- 



142 Political Pamphlets 

elusive spirit which delights to keep the common 
blessings of sun and air and freedom from other 
human beings. 'Your religion has always been de- 
graded ; you are in the dust, and I will take care you 
never rise again. I should enjoy less the possession 
of an earthly good by every additional person to whom 
it was extended.' You may not be aware of it your- 
self, most reverend Abraham, but you deny their free- 
dom to the Catholics upon the same principle that 
Sarah your wife refuses to give the receipt for a ham 
or a gooseberry dumpling : she values her receipts, 
not because they secure to her a certain flavour, but 
because they remind her that her neighbours want it : — 
a feeling laughable in a priestess, shameful in a priest ; 
venial when it withholds the blessings of a ham, 
tyrannical and execrable when it narrows the boon of 
religious freedom. 

You spend a great deal of ink about the character 
of the present prime minister. Grant you all that you 
write — I say, I fear he will ruin Ireland, and pursue 
a line of policy destructive to the true interest of his 
country : and then you tell me, he is faithful to Mrs. 
Perceval, and kind to the Master Percevals ! These 
are, undoubtedly, the first qualifications to be looked 
to in a time of the most serious public danger ; but 
somehow or another (if public and private virtues 
must always be incompatible), I should prefer that he 
destroyed the domestic happiness of Wood or Cockell, 



Peter Plymley's Letters 143 

owed for the veal of the preceding year, whipped his 
boys, and saved his country. 

The late administration did not do right ; they did 
not build their measures upon the solid basis of facts. 
They should have caused several Catholics to have 
been dissected after death by surgeons of either religion ; 
and the report to have been published with accompany- 
ing plates. If the viscera, and other organs of 
life, had been found to be the same as in Protestant 
bodies ; if the provisions of nerves, arteries, cerebrum, 
and cerebellum, had been the same as we are provided 
with, or as the Dissenters are now known to possess ; 
then, indeed, they might have met Mr. Perceval upon 
a proud eminence, and convinced the country at large 
of the strong probability that the Catholics are really 
human creatures, endowed with the feelings of men, 
and entitled to all their rights. But instead of this 
wise and prudent measure, Lord Howick, with his 
usual precipitation, brings forward a bill in their 
favour, without offering the slightest proof to the 
country that they were anything more than horses and 
oxen. The person who shows the lama at the corner 
of Piccadilly has the precaution to write up — Allowed 
by Sir Joseph Banks to be a real quadruped^ so his 
Lordship might have said — Allowed by the bench of 
Bishops to be real human creatures. ... I could write 
you twenty letters upon this subject ; but I am tired, 
and so I suppose are you. Our friendship is now of 



i44 Political Pamphlets 

forty years' standing ; you know me to be a truly 
religious man ; but I shudder to see religion treated 
like a cockade, or a pint of beer, and made the instru- 
ment of a party. I love the king, but I love the 
people as well as the king ; and if I am sorry to see 
his old age molested, I am much more sorry to see 
four millions of Catholics baffled in their just expecta- 
tions. If I love Lord Grenville, and Lord Howick, 
it is because they love their country ; if I abhor . . . 
it is because I know there is but one man among 
them who is not laughing at the enormous folly and 
credulity of the country, and that he is an ignorant 
and mischievous bigot. As for the light and frivolous 
jester, of whom it is your misfortune to think so highly, 
learn, my dear Abraham, that this political Killigrew, 
just before the breaking-up of the last administration, 
was in actual treaty with them for a place ; and if they 
had survived twenty-four hours longer, he would have 
been now declaiming against the cry of No Popery ! in- 
stead of inflaming it. With this practical comment on 
the baseness of human nature, I bid you adieu ! 

Letter VI 

Dear Abraham — What amuses me the most is 
to hear of the indulgences which the Catholics have 
received, and their exorbitance in not being satisfied 
with those indulgences : now if you complain to me 



Peter Ply Wiley's Letters 145 

that a man is obtrusive and shameless in his requests, 
and that it is impossible to bring him to reason, I 
must first of all hear the whole of your conduct 
towards him • for you may have taken from him so 
much in the first instance that, in spite of a long 
series of restitution, a vast latitude for petition may 
still remain behind. 

There is a village, no matter where, in which the 
inhabitants, on one day in the year, sit down to a 
dinner prepared at the common expense : by an extra- 
ordinary piece of tyranny, which Lord Hawkesbury 
would call the wisdom of the village ancestors, the 
inhabitants of three of the streets, about a hundred 
years ago, seized upon the inhabitants of the fourth 
street, bound them hand and foot, laid them upon 
their backs, and compelled them to look on while the 
rest were stuffing themselves with beef and beer ; the 
next year the inhabitants of the persecuted street, 
though they contributed an equal quota of the expense, 
were treated precisely in the same manner. The 
tyranny grew into a custom ; and, as the manner of 
our nature is, it was considered as the most sacred of 
all duties to keep these poor fellows without their 
annual dinner. The village was so tenacious of this 
practice, that nothing could induce them to resign it ; 
every enemy to it was looked upon as a disbeliever in 
Divine Providence, and any nefarious churchwarden 
who wished to succeed in his election had nothing to 

L 



146 Political Pamphlets 

do but to represent his antagonist as an abolitionist, 
in order to frustrate his ambition, endanger his life, 
and throw the village into a state of the most dreadful 
commotion. By degrees, however, the obnoxious 
street grew to be so well peopled, and its inhabitants 
so firmly united, that their oppressors, more afraid of 
injustice, were more disposed to be just. At the next 
dinner they are unbound, the year after allowed to 
sit upright, then a bit of bread and a glass of water ; 
till at last, after a long series of concessions, they are 
emboldened to ask, in pretty plain terms, that they 
may be allowed to sit down at the bottom of the 
table, and to fill their bellies as well as the rest. 
Forthwith a general cry of shame and scandal : ' Ten 
years ago, were you not laid upon your backs ? Don't 
you remember what a great thing you thought it to 
get a piece of bread ? How thankful you were for 
cheese parings ? Have you forgotten that memorable 
era, when the lord of the manor interfered to obtain 
for you a slice of the public pudding? And now, 
with an audacity only equalled by your ingratitude, 
you have the impudence to ask for knives and forks, 
and to request, in terms too plain to be mistaken, 
that you may sit down to table with the rest, and be 
indulged even with beef and beer : there are not 
more than half a dozen dishes which we have reserved 
for ourselves ; the rest has been thrown open to you 
in the utmost profusion ; you have potatoes, and 



Peter Plymlefs Letters 147 

carrots, suet dumplings, sops in the pan, and delicious 
toast and water in incredible quantities. Beef, mutton, 
lamb, pork, and veal are ours ; and if you were 
not the most restless and dissatisfied of human beings, 
you would never think of aspiring to enjoy them.' 

Is not this, my dainty Abraham, the very nonsense 
and the very insult which is talked to and practised 
upon the Catholics ? You are surprised that men 
who have tasted of partial justice should ask for per- 
fect justice ; that he who has been robbed of coat and 
cloak will not be contented with the restitution of one 
of his garments. He would be a very lazy blockhead 
if he were content, and I (who, though an inhabitant 
of the village, have preserved, thank God, some sense 
of justice) most earnestly counsel these half- fed 
claimants to persevere in their just demands, till they 
are admitted to a more complete share of a dinner for 
which they pay as much as the others ; and if they see 
a little attenuated lawyer squabbling at the head of 
their opponents, let them desire him to empty his 
pockets, and to pull out all the pieces of duck, fowl, 
and pudding which he has filched from the public 
feast, to carry home to his wife and children. 

You parade a great deal upon the vast concessions 
made by this country to the Irish before the Union. 
I deny that any voluntary concession was ever made 
by England to Ireland. What did Ireland ever ask 
that was granted ? What did she ever demand that 



148 Political Pamphlets 

was not refused ? How did she get her Mutiny Bill — 
a limited Parliament — a repeal of Poyning's Law — a 
constitution ? Not by the concessions of England, 
but by her fears. When Ireland asked for all these' 
things upon her knees, her petitions were rejected 
with Percevalism and contempt ; when she demanded 
them with the voice of 60,000 armed men, they were 
granted with every mark of consternation and dismay. 
Ask of Lord Auckland the fatal consequences of 
trifling with such a people as the Irish. He himself 
was the organ of these refusals. iVs secretary to the 
Lord Lieutenant, the insolence and the tyranny of this 
country passed through his hands. Ask him if he 
remembers the consequences. Ask him if he has 
forgotten that memorable evening when he came down 
booted and mantled to the House of Commons, 
when he told the House he was about to set off for 
Ireland that night, and declared before God, if he did 
not carry with him a compliance with all their demands, 
Ireland was for ever lost to this country. The present 
generation have forgotten this ; but I have not for- 
gotten it ; and I know, hasty and undignified as the 
submission of England then was, that Lord Auckland 
was right, that the delay of a single day might very 
probably have separated the two peoples for ever. 
The terms submission and fear are galling terms 
when applied from the lesser nation to the greater ; 
but it is the plain historical truth, it is the natural 



Peter Plymley's Letters 149 

consequence of injustice, it is the predicament in 
which every country places itself which leaves such a 
mass of hatred and discontent by its side. No empire 
is powerful enough to endure it ; it would exhaust the 
strength of China, and sink it with all its mandarins 
and tea-kettles to the bottom of the deep. By refus- 
ing them justice now when you are strong enough to 
refuse them anything more than justice, you will act 
over again, with the Catholics, the same scene of 
mean and precipitate submission which disgraced you 
before America, and before the volunteers of Ireland. 
We shall live to hear the Hampstead Protestant 
pronouncing such extravagant panegyrics upon holy 
water, and paying such fulsome compliments to the 
thumbs and offals of departed saints, that parties will 
change sentiments, and Lord Henry Petty and Sam 
Whitbread take a spell at No Popery. The wisdom 
of Mr. Fox was alike employed in teaching his 
country justice when Ireland was weak, and dignity 
when Ireland was strong. We are fast pacing round 
the same miserable circle of ruin and imbecility. 
Alas ! where is our guide ? 

You say that Ireland is a millstone about our 
necks ; that it would be better for us if Ireland were 
sunk at the bottom of the sea ; that the Irish are a 
nation of irreclaimable savages and barbarians. How 
often have I heard these sentiments fall from the 
plump and thoughtless squire, and from the thriving 



150 Political Pamphlets 

English shopkeeper, who has never felt the rod of an 
Orange master upon his back. Ireland a millstone 
about your neck ! Why is it not a stone of Ajax in 
your hand? I agree with you most cordially that, 
governed as Ireland now is, it would be a vast 
accession of strength if the waves of the sea were to 
rise and engulf her to-morrow. At this moment, 
opposed as we are to all the world, the annihilation 
of one of the most fertile islands on the face of the 
globe, containing five millions of human creatures, 
would be one of the most solid advantages which 
could happen to this country. I doubt very much, in 
spite of all the just abuse which has been lavished 
upon Bonaparte, whether there is any one of his con- 
quered countries the blotting out of which would be 
as beneficial to him as the destruction of Ireland 
would be to us : of countries I speak differing in 
language from the French, little habituated to their 
intercourse, and inflamed with all the resentments of a 
recently conquered people. Why will you attribute 
the turbulence of our people to any cause but the 
right — to any cause but your own scandalous op- 
pression ? If you tie your horse up to a gate, and 
beat him cruelly, is he vicious because he kicks you ? 
If you have plagued and worried a mastiff dog for 
years, is he mad because he flies at you whenever he 
sees you ? Hatred is an active, troublesome passion. 
Depend upon it, whole nations have always some 



Peter Plytnletfs Letters 151 

reason for their hatred. Before you refer the turbu- 
lence of the Irish to incurable defects in their character, 
tell me if you have treated them as friends and equals ? 
Have you protected their commerce? Have you 
respected their religion ? Have you been as anxious 
for their freedom as your own ? Nothing of all this. 
What then ? Why you have confiscated the territorial 
surface of the country twice over : you have massacred 
and exported her inhabitants : you have deprived four- 
fifths of them of every civil privilege : you have at 
every period made her commerce and manufactures 
slavishly subordinate to your own : and yet the hatred 
which the Irish bear to you is the result of an 
original turbulence of character, and of a primitive, 
obdurate wildness, utterly incapable of civilisation. 
The embroidered inanities and the sixth-form effusions 
of Mr. Canning are really not powerful enough to 
make me believe this ; nor is there any authority on 
earth (always excepting the Dean of Christ Church) 
which could make it credible to me. I am sick of 
Mr. Canning. There is not a ' ha'porth of bread to 
all this sugar and sack.' I love not the cretaceous 
and incredible countenance of his colleague. The 
only opinion in which I agree with these two gentle- 
men is that which they entertain of each other. I am 
sure that the insolence of Mr. Pitt, and the unbal- 
anced accounts of Melville, were far better than the 
perils of this new ignorance : — 



152 Political Pamphlets 

Nonne fuit satius, tristes Amaryllidis iras 
Atque superba pati fastidia ? nonne Menalcan ? 
Quamvis ille niger ? 

In the midst of the most profound peace, the 
secret articles of the Treaty of Tilsit, in which the 
destruction of Ireland is resolved upon, induce you to 
rob the Danes of their fleet. After the expedition 
sailed comes the Treaty of Tilsit, containing no 
article, public or private, alluding to Ireland. The 
state of the world, you tell me, justified us in doing 
this. Just God ! do we think only of the state of the 
world when there is an opportunity for robbery, for 
murder, and for plunder ; and do we forget the state 
of the world when we are called upon to be wise, and 
good, and just ? Does the state of the world never 
remind us that we have four millions of subjects 
whose injuries we ought to atone for, and whose 
affections we ought to conciliate ? Does the state of 
the world never warn us to lay aside our infernal 
bigotry, and to arm every man who acknowledges a 
God, and can grasp a sword ? Did it never occur to 
this administration that they might virtuously get hold 
of a force ten times greater than the force of the 
Danish fleet ? Was there no other way of protecting 
Ireland but by bringing eternal shame upon Great 
Britain, and by making the earth a den of robbers ? 
See what the men whom you have supplanted would 
have done. They would have rendered the invasion 



Peter Plymlefs Letters 153 

of Ireland impossible, by restoring to the Catholics 
their long-lost rights : they would have acted in such 
a manner that the French would neither have wished 
for invasion nor dared to attempt it : they would have 
increased the permanent strength of the country while 
they preserved its reputation unsullied. Nothing of 
this kind your friends have done, because they are 
solemnly pledged to do nothing of this kind ; because, 
to tolerate all religions, and to equalise civil rights to 
all sects, is to oppose some of the worst passions of 
our nature — to plunder and to oppress is to gratify 
them all. They wanted the huzzas of mobs, and they 
have for ever blasted the fame of England to obtain 
them. Were the fleets of Holland, France, and Spain 
destroyed by larceny ? You resisted the power of 150 
sail of the line by sheer courage, and violated every 
principle of morals from the dread of fifteen hulks, 
while the expedition itself cost you three times more 
than the value of the larcenous matter brought away. 
The French trample on the laws of God and man, not 
for old cordage, but for kingdoms, and always take 
care to be well paid for their crimes. We contrive, 
under the present administration, to unite moral with 
intellectual deficiency, and to grow weaker and worse 
by the same action. If they had any evidence of the 
intended hostility of the Danes, why was it not pro- 
duced? Why have the nations of Europe been 
allowed to feel an indignation against this country 



i54 Political Pamphlets 

beyond the reach of all subsequent information ? Are 
these times, do you imagine, when we can trifle with 
a year of universal hatred, dally with the curses of 
Europe, and then regain a lost character at pleasure, 
by the parliamentary perspirations of the Foreign 
Secretary, or the solemn asseverations of the pecuniary 
Rose ? Believe me, Abraham, it is not under such 
ministers as these that the dexterity of honest English- 
men will ever equal the dexterity of French knaves ; it 
is not in their presence that the serpent of Moses will 
ever swallow up the serpents of the magician. 

Lord Hawkesbury says that nothing is to be 
granted to the Catholics from fear. What ! not even 
justice? Why not? There are four millions of 
disaffected people within twenty miles of your own 
coast. I fairly confess that the dread which I have 
of their physical power is with me a very strong 
motive for listening to their claims. To talk of not 
acting from fear is mere parliamentary cant. From 
what motive but fear, I should be glad to know, 
have all the improvements in our constitution pro- 
ceeded ? I question if any justice has ever been done 
to large masses of mankind from any other motive. 
By what other motives can the plunderers of the 
Baltic suppose nations to be governed in their inter- 
course with each other 1 If I say, Give this people 
what they ask because it is just, do you think I should 
get ten people to listen to me ? Would not the lesser 



Peter Plymlefs Letters 155 

of the two Jenkinsons be the first to treat me with 
contempt ? The only true way to make the mass of 
mankind see the beauty of justice is by showing to 
them, in pretty plain terms, the consequences of 
injustice. If any body of French troops land in 
Ireland, the whole population of that country will 
rise against you to a man, and you could not possibly 
survive such an event three years. Such, from the 
bottom of my soul, do I believe to be the present 
state of that country ; and so far does it appear to me 
to be impolitic and unstatesman-like to conceed any- 
thing to such a danger, that if the Catholics, in 
addition to their present just demands, were to 
petition for the perpetual removal of the said Lord 
Hawkesbury from his Majesty's councils, I think, 
whatever might be the effect upon the destinies of 
Europe, and however it might retard our own 
individual destruction, that the prayer of the petition 
should be instantly complied with. Canning's croco- 
dile tears should not move me ; the hoops of the 
maids of honour should not hide him. I would tear 
him from the banisters of the back stairs, and plunge 
him in the fishy fumes of the dirtiest of all his Cinque 
Ports. 

Letter VII 

Dear Abraham — In the correspondence which is 
passing between us, you are perpetually alluding to 



156 Political Pamphlets 

the Foreign Secretary ; and in answer to the dangers 
of Ireland, which I am pressing upon your notice, you 
have nothing to urge but the confidence which you 
repose in the discretion and sound sense of this 
gentleman. I can only say, that I have listened to 
him long and often with the greatest attention ; I 
have used every exertion in my power to take a fair 
measure of him, and it appears to me impossible to 
hear him upon any arduous topic without perceiving 
that he is eminently deficient in those solid and 
serious qualities upon which, and upon which alone, 
the confidence of a great country can properly repose. 
He sweats and labours, and works for sense, and Mr. 
Ellis seems always to think it is coming, but it does 
not come ; the machine can't draw up what is not to 
be found in the spring ; Providence has made him a 
light, jesting, paragraph-writing man, and that he will 
remain to his dying day. When he is jocular he is 
strong, when he is serious he is like Samson in a wig ; 
any ordinary person is a match for him : a song, an 
ironical letter, a burlesque ode, an attack in the news- 
paper upon NicolPs eye, a smart speech of twenty 
minutes, full of gross misrepresentations and clever 
turns, excellent language, a spirited manner, lucky 
quotation, success in provoking dull men, some half 
information picked up in Pall Mall in the morning ; 
these are your friend's natural weapons ; all these 
things he can do : here I allow him to be truly great ; 



Peter Plymley's Letters 157 

nay, I will be just, and go still further, if he would 
confine himself to these things, and consider the 
facete and the playful to be the basis of his character, 
he would, for that species of man, be universally 
regarded as a person of a very good understanding ; 
call him a legislator, a reasoner, and the conductor 
of the affairs of a great nation, and it seems to me as 
absurd as if a butterfly were to teach bees to make 
honey. That he is an extraordinary writer of small 
poetry, and a diner out of the highest lustre, I do 
most readily admit. After George Selwyn, and 
perhaps Tickell, there has been no such man for 
this half-century. The Foreign Secretary is a gentle- 
man, a respectable as well as a highly agreeable man 
in private life; but you may as well feed me with 
decayed potatoes as console me for the miseries of 
Ireland by the resources of his sense and his discretion. 
It is only the public situation which this gentleman 
holds which entitles me or induces me to say so much 
about him. He is a fly in amber, nobody cares 
about the fly ; the only question is, How the devil 
did it get there ? Nor do I attack him for the love 
of glory, but from the love of utility, as a burgomaster 
hunts a rat in a Dutch dyke for fear it should flood 
a province. 

The friends of the Catholic question are, I observe, 
extremely embarrassed in arguing when they come to 
the loyalty of the Irish Catholics. As for me, I shall 



1 58 Political Pamphlets 

go straight forward to my object, and state what I 
have no manner of doubt, from an intimate knowledge 
of Ireland, to be the plain truth. Of the great Roman 
Catholic proprietors, and of the Catholic prelates, 
there may be a few, and but a few, who would follow 
the fortunes of England at all events : there is another 
set of men who, thoroughly detesting this country, 
have too much property and too much character to 
lose, not to wait \iox some very favourable event 
before they show themselves ; but the great mass of 
Catholic population, upon the slightest appearance of 
a French force in that country, would rise upon you 
to a man. It is the most mistaken policy to conceal 
the plain truth. There is no loyalty among the 
Catholics : they detest you as their worst oppressors, 
and they will continue to detest you till you remove 
the cause of their hatred. It is in your power in six 
months' time to produce a total revolution of opinions 
among this people • and in some future letter I will 
show you that this is clearly the case. At present, 
see what a dreadful state Ireland is in. The common 
toast among the low Irish is, the feast of the Passover. 
Some allusion to Bonaparte, in a play lately acted at 
Dublin, produced thunders of applause from the pit 
and the galleries ; and a politician should not be 
inattentive to the public feelings expressed in theatres. 
Mr. Perceval thinks he has disarmed the Irish : he 
has no more disarmed the Irish than he has resigned 



Peter Plymley's Letters 159 

a shilling of his own public emoluments. An Irish 
peasant fills the barrel of his gun full of tow dipped 
in oil, butters up the lock, buries it in a bog, and 
allows the Orange bloodhound to ransack his cottage 
at pleasure. Be just and kind to the Irish, and you 
will indeed disarm them ; rescue them from the 
degraded servitude in which they are held by a 
handful of their own countrymen, and you will add 
four millions of brave and affectionate men to your 
strength. Nightly visits, Protestant inspectors, licenses 
to possess a pistol, or a knife and fork, the odious 
vigour of the evangelical Perceval^acts of Parliament, 
drawn up by some English attorney, to save you 
from the hatred of four millions of people — the 
guarding yourselves from universal disaffection by a 
police ; a confidence in the little cunning of Bow 
Street, when you might rest your security upon the 
eternal basis of the best feelings : this is the meanness 
and madness to which nations are reduced when they 
lose sight of the first elements of justice, without 
which a country can be no more secure than it can be 
healthy without air. I sicken at such policy and such 
men. The fact is, the Ministers know nothing about 
the present state of Ireland ; Mr. Perceval sees a few 
clergymen, Lord Castlereagh a few general officers, 
who take care, of course, to report what is pleasant 
rather than what is true. As for the joyous and 
lepid consul, he jokes upon neutral flags and frauds, 



160 Political Pamphlets 

jokes upon Irish rebels, jokes upon northern and 
western and southern foes, and gives himself no 
trouble upon any subject; nor is the mediocrity 
of the idolatrous deputy of the slightest use. Dis- 
solved in grins, he reads no memorials upon the 
state of Ireland, listens to no reports, asks no ques- 
tions, and is the 

"Bourn from whom no traveller returns." 

The danger of an immediate insurrection is now, I 
believe, blown over. You have so strong an army in 
Ireland, and the Irish are become so much more 
cunning from the last insurrection, that you may per- 
haps be tolerably secure just at present from that evil : 
but are you secure from the efforts which the French 
may make to throw a body of troops into Ireland? 
and do you consider that event to be difficult and 
improbable? From Brest Harbour to Cape St. 
Vincent, you have above three thousand miles of 
hostile sea coast, and twelve or fourteen harbours 
quite capable of containing a sufficient force for the 
powerful invasion of Ireland. The nearest of these 
harbours is not two days' sail from the southern 
coast of Ireland, with a fair leading wind; and the 
furthest not ten. Five ships of the line, for so very 
short a passage, might carry five or six thousand 
troops with cannon and ammunition ; and Ireland 
presents to their attack a southern coast of more than 



Peter Plymley's Letters 161 

500 miles, abounding in deep bays, admirable har- 
bours, and disaffected inhabitants. Your blockading 
ships may be forced to come home for provisions and 
repairs, or they may be blown off in a gale of wind 
and compelled to bear away for their own coast ; and 
you will observe that the very same wind which locks 
you up in the British Channel, when you are got 
there, is evidently favourable for the invasion of 
Ireland. And yet this is called Government, and the 
people huzza Mr. Perceval for continuing to expose 
his country day after day to such tremendous perils 
as these ; cursing the men who would have given up a 
question in theology to have saved us from such a risk. 
The British empire at this moment is in the state of 
a peach-blossom — if the wind blows gently from one 
quarter, it survives ; if furiously from the other, it 
perishes. A stiff breeze may set in from the north, 
the Rochefort squadron will be taken, and the 
Minister will be the most holy of men : if it comes 
from some other point, Ireland is gone ; we curse 
ourselves as a set of monastic madmen, and call out 
for the unavailing satisfaction of Mr. Perceval's head. 
Such a state of political existence is scarcely credible : 
it is the action of a mad young fool standing upon one 
foot, and peeping down the crater of Mount ^Etna, not 
the conduct of a wise and sober people deciding upon 
their best and dearest interests : and in the name, the 
much-injured name, of heaven, what is it all for that 

M 



1 62 Political Pamphlets 

we expose ourselves to these dangers ? Is it that we 
may sell more muslin? Is it that we may acquire 
more territory? Is it that we may strengthen what 
we have already acquired ? No ; nothing of all this ; 
but that one set of Irishmen may torture another set 
of Irishmen — that Sir Phelim O'Callaghan may con- 
tinue to whip Sir Toby M'Tackle, his next door 
neighbour, and continue to ravish his Catholic 
daughters ; and these are the measures which the 
honest and consistent Secretary supports ; and this 
is the Secretary whose genius in the estimation of 
Brother Abraham is to extinguish the genius of 
Bonaparte. Pompey was killed by a slave, Goliath 
smitten by a stripling. Pyrrhus died by the hand of 
a woman ; tremble, thou great Gaul, from whose 
head an armed Minerva leaps forth in the hour of 
danger ; tremble, thou scourge of God, a pleasant man 
is come out against thee, and thou shalt be laid low 
by a joker of jokes, and he shall talk his pleasant talk 
against thee, and thou shalt be no more ! 

You tell me, in spite of all this parade of sea-coast, 
Bonaparte has neither ships nor sailors : but this is a 
mistake. He has not ships and sailors to contest the 
empire of the seas with Great Britain, but there re- 
mains quite sufficient of the navies of France, Spain, 
Holland, and Denmark, for these short excursions 
and invasions. Do you think, too, that Bonaparte 
does not add to his navy every year? Do you 



Peter Plymley's Letters 163 

suppose, with all Europe at his feet, that he can find 
any difficulty in obtaining timber, and that money will 
not procure for him any quantity of naval stores he may 
want? The mere machine, the empty ship, he can 
build as well, and as quickly, as you can ; and though 
he may not find enough of practised sailors to man 
large fighting-fleets — it is not possible to conceive 
that he can want sailors for such sort of purposes as 
I have stated. He is at present the despotic monarch 
of above twenty thousand miles of sea-coast, and yet 
you suppose he cannot procure sailors for the invasion 
of Ireland. Believe, if you please, that such a fleet 
met at sea by any number of our ships at all compar- 
able to them in point of force, would be immediately 
taken, let it be so ; I count nothing upon their power 
of resistance, only upon their power of escaping un- 
observed. If experience has taught us anything, it is 
the impossibility of perpetual blockades. The instances 
are innumerable, during the course of this war, where 
whole fleets have sailed in and out of harbour, in 
spite of every vigilance used to prevent it. I shall 
only mention those cases where Ireland is concerned. 
In December, 1796, seven ships of the line, and ten 
transports, reached Bantry Bay from Brest, without 
having seen an English ship in their passage. - It 
blew a storm when they were off shore, and therefore 
England still continues to be an independent king- 
dom. You will observe that at the very time the 



1 64 Political Pamphlets 

French fleet sailed out of Brest Harbour, Admiral 
Colpoys was cruising off there with a powerful 
squadron, and still, from the particular circumstances 
of the weather, found it impossible to prevent the 
French from coming out. During the time that 
Admiral Colpoys was cruising off Brest, Admiral 
Richery, with six ships of the line, passed him, and 
got safe into the harbour. At the very moment when 
the French squadron was lying in Bantry Bay, Lord 
Bridport with his fleet was locked up by a foul wind 
in the Channel, and for several days could not stir to 
the assistance of Ireland. Admiral Colpoys, totally 
unable to find the French fleet, came home. Lord 
Bridport, at the change of the wind, cruised for them 
in vain, and they got safe back to Brest, without 
having seen a single one of those floating bulwarks, 
the possession of which we believe will enable us 
with impunity to set justice and common sense at 
defiance. Such is the miserable and precarious state 
of an anemocracy, of a people who put their trust in 
hurricanes, and are governed by wind. In August, 
1798, three forty-gun frigates landed 1100 men 
under Humbert, making the passage from Rochelle 
to Killala without seeing any English ship. In 
October of the same year, four French frigates 
anchored in Killala Bay with 2000 troops; and 
though they did not land their troops they returned 
to France in safety. In the same month, a line-of- 



Peter Plymlefs Letters 165 

battle ship, eight stout frigates, and a brig, all full of 
troops and stores, reached the coast of Ireland, and 
were fortunately, in sight of land, destroyed, after an 
obstinate engagement, by Sir John Warren. 

If you despise the little troop which, in these 
numerous experiments, did make good its landing, 
take with you, if you please, this precis of its exploits : 
eleven hundred men, commanded by a soldier raised 
from the ranks, put to rout a select army of 6000 
men, commanded by General Lake, seized their 
ordnance, ammunition, and stores, advanced 150 
miles into a country containing an armed force of 
150,000 men, and at last surrendered to the Viceroy, 
an experienced general, gravely and cautiously advanc- 
ing at the head of all his chivalry and of an immense 
army to oppose him. You must excuse these details 
about Ireland, but it appears to me to be of all other 
subjects the most important. If we conciliate Ireland, 
we can do nothing amiss ; if we do not, we can do 
nothing well. If Ireland was friendly, we might 
equally set at defiance the talents of Bonaparte and 
the blunders of his rival, Mr. Canning; we could 
then support the ruinous and silly bustle of our use- 
less expeditions, and the almost incredible ignorance 
of our commercial orders in council. Let the present 
administration give up but this one point, and there 
is nothing which I would not consent to grant them. 
Mr. Perceval shall have full liberty to insult the tomb 



1 66 Political Pamphlets 

of Mr. Fox, and to torment every eminent Dissenter 
in Great Britain ; Lord Camden shall have large 
boxes of plums ; Mr. Rose receive permission to pre- 
fix to his name the appellative of virtuous ; and to 
the Viscount Castlereagh a round sum of ready money 
shall be well and truly paid into his hand. Lastly, 
what remains to Mr. George Canning, but that he 
ride up and down Pall Mall glorious upon a white 
horse, and that they cry out before him, Thus shall it 
be done to the statesman who hath written 'The 
Needy Knife-Grinder,' and the German play? Adieu 
only for the present ; you shall soon hear from me 
again ; it is a subject upon which I cannot long be 
silent. 

Letter IX 

Dear Abraham — No Catholic can be chief Gover- 
nor or Governor of this kingdom, Chancellor or Keeper 
of the Great Seal, Lord High Treasurer, Chief of any 
of the Courts of Justice, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
Puisne Judge, Judge in the Admiralty, Master of the 
Rolls, Secretary of State, Keeper of the Privy Seal, 
Vice -Treasurer or his Deputy, Teller or Cashier of 
Exchequer, Auditor or General, Governor or Custos 
Rotulorum of Counties, Chief Governor's Secretary, 
Privy Councillor, King's Counsel, Serjeant, Attorney, 
Solicitor-General, Master in Chancery, Provost or Fel 
low of Trinity College, Dublin, Postmaster- General } 



Peter Plymley's Letters 167 

Master and Lieutenant -General of Ordnance, Com- 
mander-in-Chief, General on the Staff, Sheriff, Sub- 
Sheriff, Mayor, Bailiff, Recorder, Burgess, or any other 
officer in a City, or a Corporation. No Catholic can 
be guardian to a Protestant, and no priest guardian at 
all ; no Catholic can be a gamekeeper, or have for 
sale, or otherwise, any arms or warlike stores ; no 
Catholic can present to a living, unless he choose to 
turn Jew in order to obtain that privilege ; the pecuni- 
ary qualification of Catholic jurors is made higher 
than that of Protestants, and no relaxation of the 
ancient rigorous code is permitted, unless to those 
who shall take an oath prescribed by 13 and 14 
George III. Now if this is not picking the plums 
out of the pudding and leaving the mere batter to the 
Catholics, I know not what is. If it were merely the 
Privy Council, it would be (I allow) nothing but a 
point of honour for which the mass of Catholics were 
contending, the honour of being chief- mourners or 
pall-bearers to the country ; but surely no man will 
contend that every barrister may not speculate upon 
the possibility of being a Puisne Judge ; and that 
every shopkeeper must not feel himself injured by his 
exclusion from borough offices. 

One of the greatest practical evils which the 
Catholics suffer in Ireland is their exclusion from the 
offices of Sheriff and Deputy Sheriff. Nobody who is 
unacquainted with Ireland can conceive the obstacles 



1 68 Political Pamphlets 

which this opposes to the fair administration of justice. 
The formation of juries is now entirely in the hands 
of the Protestants ; the lives, liberties, and properties 
of the Catholics in the hands of the juries ; and this 
is the arrangement for the administration of justice in 
a country where religious prejudices are inflamed to 
the greatest degree of animosity ! In this country, if 
a man be a foreigner, if he sell slippers, and sealing 
wax, and artificial flowers, we are so tender of human 
life that we take care half the number of persons who 
are to decide upon his fate should be men of similar 
prejudices and feelings with himself: but a poor 
Catholic in Ireland may be tried by twelve Percevals, 
and destroyed according to the manner of that gentle- 
man in the name of the Lord, and with all the insult- 
ing forms of justice. I do not go the length of saying 
that deliberate and wilful injustice is done. I have 
no doubt that the Orange Deputy Sheriff thinks it 
would be a most unpardonable breach of his duty if 
he did not summon a Protestant panel. I can easily 
believe that the Protestant panel may conduct them- 
selves very conscientiously in hanging the gentlemen 
of the crucifix ; but I blame the law which does not 
guard the Catholic against the probable tenor of those 
feelings which must unconsciously influence the judg- 
ments of mankind. I detest that state of society 
which extends unequal degrees of protection to 
different creeds and persuasions ; and I cannot 



Peter Ply why's Letters 169 

describe to you the contempt I feel for a man who, 
calling himself a statesman, defends a system which 
fills the heart of every Irishman with treason, and 
makes his allegiance prudence, not choice. 

I request to know if the vestry taxes in Ireland are 
a mere matter of romantic feeling which can affect 
only the Earl of Fingal ? In a parish where there are 
four thousand Catholics and fifty Protestants, the 
Protestants may meet together in a vestry meeting at 
which no Catholic has the right to vote, and tax all 
the lands in the parish is. 6d. per acre, or in the 
pound, I forget which, for the repairs of the church 
— and how has the necessity of these repairs been 
ascertained? A Protestant plumber has discovered 
that it wants new leading ; a Protestant carpenter is 
convinced the timbers are not sound ; and the glazier 
who hates holy water (as an accoucheur hates celibacy, 
because he gets nothing by it) is employed to put in 
new sashes. 

The grand juries in Ireland are the great scene of 
jobbing. They have a power of making a county 
rate to a considerable extent for roads, bridges, and 
other objects of general accommodation. 'You 
suffer the road to be brought through my park, and I 
will have the bridge constructed in a situation where 
it will make a beautiful object to your house. You 
do my job, and I will do yours.' These are the 
sweet and interesting subjects which occasionally 



170 Political Pamphlets 

occupy Milesian gentlemen while they are attendant 
upon this grand inquest of justice. But there is a 
religion, it seems, even in jobs • and it will be highly 
gratifying to Mr. Perceval to learn that no man in 
Ireland who believes in seven sacraments can carry a 
public road, or bridge, one yard out of the direction 
most beneficial to the public, and that nobody can 
cheat the public who does not expound the Scriptures 
in the purest and most orthodox manner. This will 
give pleasure to Mr. Perceval : but, from his unfair- 
ness upon these topics I appeal to the justice and the 
proper feelings of Mr. Huskisson. I ask him if the 
human mind can experience a more dreadful sensa- 
tion than to see its own jobs refused, and the jobs of 
another religion perpetually succeeding ? I ask him 
his opinion of a jobless faith, of a creed which dooms 
a man through life to a lean and plunderless integrity. 
He knows that human nature cannot and will not 
bear it ; and if we were to paint a political Tartarus, 
it would be an endless series of snug expectations and 
cruel disappointments. These are a few of many 
dreadful inconveniences which the Catholics of all 
ranks suffer from the laws by which they are at 
present oppressed. Besides, look at human nature : 
what is the history of all professions ? Joel is to be 
brought up to the bar : has Mrs. Plymley the slightest 
doubt of his being Chancellor? Do not his two 
shrivelled aunts live in the certainty of seeing him in 



Peter Plymleys Letters 171 

that situation, and of cutting out with their own 
hands his equity habiliments ? And I could name a 
certain minister of the Gospel who does not, in the 
bottom of his heart, much differ from these opinions. 
Do you think that the fathers and mothers of the 
holy Catholic Church are not as absurd as Protestant 
papas and mammas ? The probability I admit to be, 
in each particular case, that the sweet little blockhead 
will in fact never get a brief ; — but I will venture to 
say there is not a parent from the Giant's Causeway 
to Bantry Bay who does not conceive that his child 
is the unfortunate victim of the exclusion, and that 
nothing short of positive law could prevent his own 
dear, pre-eminent Paddy from rising to the highest 
honours of the State. So with the army and parlia- 
ment ; in fact, few are excluded ; but, in imagination, 
all : you keep twenty or thirty Catholics out, and you 
lose the affections of four millions ; and, let me tell 
you, that recent circumstances have by no means 
tended to diminish in the minds of men that hope of 
elevation beyond their own rank which is so congenial 
to our nature : from pleading for John Roe to taxing 
John Bull, from jesting for Mr. Pitt and writing in 
the Anti-Jacobin, to managing the affairs of Europe — 
these are leaps which seem to justify the fondest 
dreams of mothers and of aunts. 

I do not say that the disabilities to which the 
Catholics are exposed amount to such intolerable 



i72 Political Pamphlets 

grievances, that the strength and industry of a nation 
are overwhelmed by them : the increasing prosperity 
of Ireland fully demonstrates to the contrary. But I 
repeat again, what I have often stated in the course 
of our correspondence, that your laws against the 
Catholics are exactly in that state in which you have 
neither the benefits of rigour nor of liberality : every 
law which prevented the Catholic from gaining 
strength and wealth is repealed ; every law which can 
irritate remains ; if you were determined to insult 
the Catholics you should have kept them weak ; if 
you resolved to give them strength, you should have 
ceased to insult them — at present your conduct is 
pure, unadulterated folly. 

Lord Hawkesbury says, ■ We heard nothing about 
the Catholics till we began to mitigate the laws 
against them ; when we relieved them in part from 
this oppression they began to be disaffected.' This is 
very true ; but it proves just what I have said, that 
you have either done too much or too little ; and as 
there lives not, I hope, upon earth, so depraved a 
courtier that he would load the Catholics with their 
ancient chains, what absurdity it is, then, not to 
render their dispositions friendly, when you leave 
their arms and legs free ! 

You know, and many Englishmen know, what 
passes in China ; but nobody knows or cares what 
passes in Ireland. At the beginning of the present 



Peter Plymley's Letters 173 

reign no Catholic could realise property, or carry on 
any business ; they were absolutely annihilated, and 
had no more agency in the country than so many 
trees. They were like Lord Mulgrave's eloquence 
and Lord Camden's wit ; the legislative bodies did 
not know of their existence. For these twenty-five 
years last past the Catholics have been engaged in 
commerce; within that period the commerce of 
Ireland has doubled — there are four Catholics at 
work for one Protestant, and eight Catholics at work 
for one Episcopalian. Of course, the proportion 
which Catholic wealth bears to Protestant wealth is 
every year altering rapidly in favour of the Catholics. 
I have already told you what their purchases of land 
were the last year : since that period I have been at 
some pains to find out the actual state of the Catholic 
wealth : it is impossible upon such a subject to arrive 
at complete accuracy ; but I have good reason to 
believe that there are at present 2000 Catholics in 
Ireland possessing an income of ^500 and upwards, 
many of these with incomes of one, two, three, and 
four thousand, and some amounting to fifteen and 
twenty thousand per annum : — and this is the king- 
dom, and these the people, for whose conciliation we 
are to wait Heaven knows when, and Lord Hawkes- 
bury why ! As for me, I never think of the situation 
of Ireland without feeling the same necessity for 
immediate interference as I should do if I saw blood 



174 Political Pamphlets 

flowing from a great artery. I rush towards it with 
the instinctive rapidity of a man desirous of prevent- 
ing death, and have no other feeling but that in a few 
seconds the patient may be no more. 

I could not help smiling, in the times of No 
Popery, to witness the loyal indignation of many 
persons at the attempt made by the last ministry to 
do something for the relief of Ireland. The general 
cry in the country was, that they would not see their 
beloved Monarch used ill in his old age, and that 
they would stand by him to the last drop of their 
blood. I respect good feelings, however erroneous 
be the occasions on which they display themselves ; 
and therefore I saw in all this as much to admire as 
to blame. It was a species of affection, however, 
which reminded me very forcibly of the attachment 
displayed by the servants of the Russian ambassador 
at the beginning of the last century. His Excellency 
happened to fall down in a kind of apoplectic fit, when 
he was paying a morning visit in the house of an 
acquaintance. The confusion was of course very 
great, and messengers were despatched in every 
direction to find a surgeon : who, upon his arrival, 
declared that his Excellency must be immediately 
blooded, and prepared himself forthwith to perform 
the operation : the barbarous servants of the embassy, 
who were there in great numbers, no sooner saw the 
surgeon prepared to wound the arm of their master 



Peter Plymley's Letters 175 

with a sharp, shining instrument, than they drew their 
swords, put themselves in an attitude of defence, and 
swore in pure Sclavonic, ' that they would murder any 
man who attempted to do him the slightest injury : 
he had been a very good master to them, and they 
would not desert him in his misfortunes, or suffer his 
blood to be shed while he was off his guard, and 
incapable of defending himself.' By good fortune, 
the secretary arrived about this period of the dispute, 
and his Excellency, relieved from superfluous blood 
and perilous affection, was, after much difficulty, 
restored to life. 

There is an argument brought forward with some 
appearance of plausibility in the House of Commons, 
which certainly merits an answer : You know that the 
Catholics now vote for members of parliament in 
Ireland, and that they outnumber the Protestants in a 
very great proportion ; if you allow Catholics to sit 
in parliament, religion will be found to influence votes 
more than property, and the greater part of the 100 
Irish members who are returned to parliament will be 
Catholics. Add to these the Catholic members who 
are returned in England, and you will have a phalanx 
of heretical strength which every minister will be com- 
pelled to respect, and occasionally to conciliate by 
concessions incompatible with the interests of the 
Protestant Church. The fact is, however, that you 
are at this moment subjected to every danger of this 



176 Political Pamphlets 

kind which you can possibly apprehend hereafter. If 
the spiritual interests of the voters are more powerful 
than their temporal interests, they can bind down their 
representatives to support any measures favourable to 
the Catholic religion, and they can change the objects 
of their choice till they have found Protestant mem- 
bers (as they easily may do) perfectly obedient to 
their wishes. If the superior possessions of the Pro- 
testants prevent the Catholics from uniting for a 
common political object, then danger you fear 
cannot exist : if zeal, on the contrary, gets the 
better of acres, then the danger at present exists, from 
the right of voting already given to the Catholics, and 
it will not be increased by allowing them to sit in 
parliament. There are, as nearly as I can recollect, 
thirty seats in Ireland for cities and counties, where 
the Protestants are the most numerous, and where the 
members returned must of course be Protestants. In 
the other seventy representations the wealth of the 
Protestants is opposed to the number of the Catholics ; 
and if all the seventy members returned were of the 
Catholic persuasion, they must still plot the destruc- 
tion of our religion in the midst of 588 Protestants. 
Such terrors would disgrace a cook-maid, or a tooth- 
less aunt — when they fall from the lips of bearded 
and senatorial men, they are nauseous, antiperistaltic, 
and emetical. 

How can you for a moment doubt of the rapid 



Peter Plymlefs Letters 177 

effects which would be produced by the emancipation ? 
In the first place, to my certain knowledge the Catholics 
have long since expressed to his Majesty's Ministers 
their perfect readiness to vest in his Majesty, either 
with the consent of the Pope, or without it if it cannot 
be obtained, the nomination of the Catholic prelacy. 
The Catholic prelacy in Ireland consists of twenty-six 
bishops and the warden of Gal way, a dignitary enjoying 
Catholic jurisdiction. The number of Roman Catholic 
priests in Ireland exceeds one thousand. The ex- 
penses of his peculiar worship are, to a substantial 
farmer or mechanic, five shillings per annum; to a 
labourer (where he is not entirely excused) one 
shilling per annum ; this includes the contribution of 
the whole family, and for this the priest is bound to 
attend them when sick, and to confess them when 
they apply to him ; he is also to keep his chapel in 
order, to celebrate divine service, and to preach on 
Sundays and holydays. In the northern district a 
priest gains from £3° to ;£ 50 ; in the other parts 01 
Ireland from ;£6o to ^90 per annum. The best 
paid Catholic bishops receive about ^400 per annum ; 
the others from ^300 to ^350. My plan is very 
simple : I would have 300 Catholic parishes at ;£ioo 
per annum, 300 at ^200 per annum, and 400 at 
^300 per annum; this, for the whole thousand 
parishes, would amount to ,£190,000. To the pre- 
lacy I would allot ^20,000 in unequal proportions, 

N 



178 Political Pamphlets 

from ;£iooo to ^500; and I would appropriate 
^40,000 more for the support of Catholic Schools, 
and the repairs of Catholic churches ; the whole 
amount of which sum is ,£250,000, about the expense 
of three days of one of our genuine, good English 
just and necessary wars. The clergy should all 
receive their salaries at the Bank of Ireland, and I 
would place the whole patronage in the hands of the 
Crown. Now, I appeal to any human being, except 
Spencer Perceval, Esq., of the parish of Hampstead, 
what the disaffection of a clergy would amount to, 
gaping after this graduated bounty of the Crown, and 
whether Ignatius Loyola himself, if he were a living 
blockhead instead of a dead saint, could withstand the 
temptation of bouncing from ^100 a year at Sligo, 
to £iZ°° m Tipperary? This is the miserable sum 
of money for which the merchants and landowners and 
nobility of England are exposing themselves to the 
tremendous peril of losing Ireland. The sinecure 
places of the Roses and the Percevals, and the ' dear 
and near relations,' put up to auction at thirty years' 
purchase, would almost amount to the money. 

I admit that nothing can be more reasonable than 
to expect that a Catholic priest should starve to death, 
genteelly and pleasantly, for the good of the Pro- 
testant religion ; but is it equally reasonable to expect 
that he should do so for the Protestant pews, and 
Protestant brick and mortar ? On an Irish Sabbath 



Peter Plymley's Letters 179 

the bell of a neat parish church often summons to 
church only the parson and an occasionally conform- 
ing clerk ; while, two hundred yards off, a thousand 
Catholics are huddled together in a miserable hovel, 
and pelted by all the storms of heaven. Can any- 
thing be more distressing than to see a venerable 
man pouring forth sublime truths in tattered breeches, 
and depending for his food upon the little offal he 
gets from his parishioners? I venerate a human 
being who starves for his principles, let them be what 
they may ; but starving for anything is not at all to 
the taste of the honourable flagellants : strict prin- 
ciples, and good pay, is the motto of Mr. Perceval : 
the one he keeps in great measure for the faults of 
his enemies, the other for himself. 

There are parishes in Connaught in which a Pro- 
testant was never settled nor even seen. In that 
province, in Munster, and in parts of Leinster, the 
entire peasantry for sixty miles are Catholics ; in these 
tracts the churches are frequently shut for want of a 
congregation, or opened to an assemblage of from six 
to twenty persons. Of what Protestants there are in 
Ireland, the greatest part are gathered together in 
Ulster, or they live in towns. In the country of the 
other three provinces the Catholics see no other 
religion but their own, and are at the least as fifteen 
to one Protestant. In the diocese of Tuam they are 
sixty to one ; in the parish of St. Mulins, diocese ot 



t8o Political Pamphlets 

Leghlin, there are four thousand Catholics and one 
Protestant; in the town of Grasgenamana, in the 
county of Kilkenny, there are between four and five 
hundred Catholic houses, and three Protestant houses. 
In the parish of Allen, county Kildare, there is no 
Protestant, though it is very populous. In the parish 
of Arlesin, Queen's County, the proportion is one 
hundred to one. In the whole county of Kilkenny, 
by actual enumeration, it is seventeen to one ; in the 
diocese of Kilmacduagh, province of Connaught, 
fifty-two to one, by ditto. These I give you as a few 
specimens of the present state of Ireland ; and yet 
there are men impudent and ignorant enough to 
contend that such evils require no remedy, and that 
mild family man who dwelleth in Hampstead can find 
none but the cautery and the knife. 

' Omne per ignem 

Excoquitur vitium.' 

I cannot describe the horror and disgust which 
I felt at hearing Mr. Perceval call upon the then 
Ministry for measures of vigour in Ireland. If I lived 
at Hampstead upon stewed meats and claret ; if I 
walked to church every Sunday before eleven young 
gentlemen of my own begetting, with their faces 
washed, and their hair pleasingly combed; if the 
Almighty had blessed me with every earthly comfort 
— how awfully would I pause before I sent forth the 
flame and the sword over the cabins of the poor, 



Peter Plymley's Letters 181 

brave, generous, open-hearted peasants of Ireland ! 
How easy it is to shed human blood ; how easy it is 
to persuade ourselves that it is our duty to do so, 
and that the decision has cost us a severe struggle ; 
how much in all ages have wounds and shrieks and 
tears been the cheap and vulgar resources of the rulers 
of mankind ; how difficult and how noble it is to 
govern in kindness and to found an empire upon the 
everlasting basis of justice and affection ! But what 
do men call vigour? To let loose hussars and to 
bring up artillery, to govern with lighted matches, and 
to cut, and push, and prime ; I call this not vigour, 
but the sloth of cruelty and ignorance. The vigour I 
love consists in finding out wherein subjects are 
aggrieved, in relieving them, in studying the temper 
and genius of a people, in consulting their prejudices, 
in selecting proper persons to lead and manage them, 
in the laborious, watchful, and difficult task of in- 
creasing public happiness by allaying each particular 
discontent. In this way Hoche pacified La Vendee 
— and in this way only will Ireland ever be subdued. 
But this, in the eyes of Mr. Perceval, is imbecility 
and meanness. Houses are not broken open, women 
are not insulted, the people seem all to be happy ; 
they are not rode over by horses, and cut by whips. 
Do you call this vigour ? Is this government ? 



VL— < LETTER TO THE JOURNEYMEN AND 
LABOURERS OF ENGLAND, WALES, 
SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND. LETTER 
TO JACK HARROW.' 

By William Cobbett 

{Although Cobbett produced not a few political pam- 
phlets in the strictest sense of the term, the infinitely 
greater part of his work is comprised during his earlier 
days in the volumes of Peter Porcupine's Gazette, 
during his later in those of the Weekly Register. This 
latter, however, he himself for a time actually entitled 
The Weekly Political Pamphlet, while he alluded to it 
under that name even at other times ; and his whole 
work was imbued even more deeply than that of Defoe 
with the pamphlet character. I have selected two 
examples from the critical time when he was still exas- 
perated by his imprisonment, and stung into fresh efforts 
by debt and the prospect of fresh difficulties. They 
exhibit in the most striking form all Cobbetfs pet 



Letter to the Journeymen 183 

hatreds — of the unreformed Parliament \ of paper 
money », of political economy \ of potatoes, and of many 
other things. The first is the Register of id Novem- 
ber 18 16, the first number of the cheapened form, which 
was sold at twopence, and so acquired the name of 
1 Twopenny Trash] from a phrase of as some say, 
Canning's, others Castlereagh's. The second is an early 
number of the papers written from America. They 
will, with the notes, explain themselves.) 

Letter to the Journeymen and Labourers of 
England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, 
on the Cause of their present Miseries ; 
on the Measures which have produced that 
Cause • on the Remedies which some foolish 
and some cruel and insolent men have pro- 
posed ; and on the line of conduct which 
Journeymen and Labourers ought to pur- 
sue, IN ORDER TO OBTAIN EFFECTUAL RELIEF, 

and to assist in promoting the tranquil- 
lity and restoring the happiness of their 
Country. 

Friends and Fellow- Countrymen — Whatever 
the pride of rank, of riches, or of scholarship may have 
induced some men to believe, or to affect to believe, 
the real strength and all the resources of a country 



1 84 Political Pamphlets 

ever have sprung and ever must spring from the 
labour of its people ; and hence it is that this nation, 
which is so small in numbers and so poor in climate 
and soil compared with many others, has, for many 
ages, been the most powerful nation in the world : it 
is the most industrious, the most laborious, and, 
therefore, the most powerful. Elegant dresses, superb 
furniture, stately buildings, fine roads and canals, fleet 
horses and carriages, numerous and stout ships, ware- 
houses teeming with goods ; all these, and many other 
objects that fall under our view, are so many marks 
of national wealth and resources. But all these 
spring from labour. Without the journeyman and 
the labourer none of them could exist ; without the 
assistance of their hands the country would be a 
wilderness, hardly worth the notice of an invader. 

As it is the labour of those who toil which makes 
a country abound in resources, so it is the same class 
of men, who must, by their arms, secure its safety 
and uphold its fame. Titles and immense sums of 
money have been bestowed upon numerous Naval 
and Military Commanders. Without calling the 
justice of these in question, we may assert that the 
victories were obtained hy you and your fathers and 
brothers and sons, in co-operation with those Com- 
manders, who, with your aid, have done great and 
wonderful things ; but who, without that aid, would 
have been as impotent as children at the breast. 



Letter to the Journeymen 185 

With this correct idea of your own worth in your 
minds, with what indignation must you hear your- 
selves called the Populace, the Rabble, the Mob, the 
Swinish Multitude ; and with what greater indignation, 
if possible, must you hear the projects of those cool 
and cruel and insolent men, who, now that you have 
been, without any fault of yours, brought into a state 
of misery, propose to narrow the limit of parish 
relief, to prevent you from marrying in the days of 
your youth, or to thrust you out to seek your bread 
in foreign lands, never more to behold your parents 
or friends ? But suppress your indignation, until we 
return to this topic, after we have considered the 
cause of your present misery, and the measures 
which have produced that cause. 

The times in which we live are full of peril. The 
nation, as described by the very creatures of Govern- 
ment, is fast advancing to that period when an import- 
ant change must take place. It is the lot of mankind 
that some shall labour with their limbs and others 
with their minds ; and, on all occasions, more especi- 
ally on an occasion like the present, it is the duty 
of the latter to come to the assistance of the former. 
We are all equally interested in the peace and 
happiness of our common country. It is of the 
utmost importance that, in the seeking to obtain 
these objects, our endeavours should be uniform, and 
tend all to the same point. Such an uniformity cannot 



1 86 Political Pamphlets 

exist without an uniformity of sentiment as to public 
matters, and to produce this latter uniformity amongst 
you is the object of this address. 

As to the cause of our present miseries, it is the 
enormous amount of the taxes which the Government 
compels us to pay for the support of its army, its place- 
men, its pensioners, etc., and for the payment of the 
interest of its debt. That this is the real cause has 
been a thousand times proved; and it is now so 
acknowledged by the creatures of the Government 
themselves. Two hundred and five of the Corre- 
spondents of the Board of Agriculture ascribe the 
ruin of the country to taxation. Numerous writers, 
formerly the friends of the Pitt system, now declare 
that taxation has been the cause of our distress. 
Indeed, when we compare our present state to the 
state of the country previous to the wars against 
France, we must see that our present misery is owing 
to no other cause. The taxes then annually raised 
amounted to about fifteen millions : they amounted 
last year to seventy millions. The nation was then 
happy ; it is now miserable. 

The writers and speakers who labour in the cause 
of corruption, have taken great pains to make the 
labouring classes believe that they are not taxed ; that 
the taxes which are paid by the landlords, farmers, 
and tradesmen, do not affect you, the journeymen and 
labourers ; and that the tax-makers have been very 



Letter to the Journeymen 187 

lenient towards you. But, I hope that you see to the 
bottom of these things now. You must be sensible 
that if all your employers were totally ruined in one 
day, you would be wholly without employment and 
without bread ; and, of course, in whatever degree your 
employers are deprived of their means, they must 
withhold means from you. In America the most 
awkward common labourer receives five shillings a 
day, while provisions are cheaper in that country than 
in this. Here, a carter, boarded in the house, receives 
about seven pounds a year ; in America, he receives 
about thirty pounds a year. What is it that makes 
this difference ? Why, in America the whole of the 
taxes do not amount to more than about ten shillings 
a head upon the whole of the population ; while in 
England they amount to nearly six pounds a head ! 
There, a journeyman or labourer may support his 
family well, and save from thirty to sixty pounds a 
year : here, he amongst you is a lucky man, who can 
provide his family with food and with decent clothes 
to cover them, without any hope of possessing a penny 
in the days of sickness or of old age. There, the Chief 
Magistrate receives six thousand pounds a year ; here, 
the civil list surpasses a million of pounds in amount, 
and as much is allowed to each of the Princesses in 
one year, as the chief magistrate of America receives 
in two years, though that country is nearly equal to 
this in population. 



1 88 Political Pamphlets 

A Mr. Preston, a lawyer of great eminence, and a 
great praiser of Pitt, has just published a pamphlet, in 
which is this remark : 'It should always be remembered, 
that the eighteen pounds a year paid to any placeman 
or pensioner, withdraws from the public the means of 
giving active employment to one individual as the head 
of a family ; thus depriving five persons of the means 
of sustenance from the fruits of honest industry and 
active labour, and rendering them paupers.' Thus 
this supporter of Pitt acknowledges the great truth 
that the taxes are the cause of a people's poverty and 
misery and degradation. We did not stand in need 
of this acknowledgment; the fact has been clearly 
proved before ; but it is good for us to see the friends 
and admirers of Pitt brought to make this confession. 

It has been attempted to puzzle you with this sort 
of question : ' If taxes be the cause of the people's 
misery, how comes it that they were not so miserable 
before the taxes were reduced as they are now ? ' 
Here is a fallacy which you will be careful to detect. 
I know that the taxes have been reduced; that is 
to say, nominally reduced, but not so in fact ; on the 
contrary, they have, in reality, been greatly augmented. 
This has been done by the sleight-of-hand of paper 
money. Suppose, for instance, that four years ago, I 
had a hundred pounds to pay in taxes, then a hundred 
and thirty bushels of wheat would have paid my share. 
If I have now seventy-five pounds to pay in taxes, it 



Letter to the Journeymen 189 

will require a hundred and ninety bushels of wheat 
to pay my share of taxes. Consequently, though my 
taxes are nominally reduced, they are, in reality, greatly 
augmented. This has been done by the legerdemain 
of paper money. In 181 2, the pound-note was worth 
only thirteen shillings in silver. It is now worth 
twenty shillings. Therefore, when we now pay a 
pound-note to the tax-gatherer, we really pay him 
twenty shillings where we before paid him thirteen 
shillings ; and the Landholders who lent pound-notes 
worth thirteen shillings each, are now paid their 
interest in pounds worth twenty shillings each. And 
the thing is come to what Sir Francis Burdett told 
the Parliament it would come to. He told them in 
181 1, that if they ever attempted to pay the interest 
of their debt in gold and silver, or in paper money 
equal in value to gold and silver, the farmers and 
tradesmen must be ruined, and the journeymen and 
labourers reduced to the last stage of misery. 

Thus, then, it is clear that it is the weight of the 
taxes, under which you are sinking, which has already 
pressed so many of you down into the state of 
paupers, and which now threatens to deprive many of 
you of your existence. We next come to consider 
what have been the causes of this weight of taxes. 
Here we must go back a little in our history, and you 
will soon see that this intolerable weight has all pro- 
ceeded from the want of a Parliamentary Reform. 



190 Political Pamphlets 

In the year 1764, soon after the present king came 
to the throne, the annual interest of the Debt amounted 
to about five millions, and the whole of the taxes to 
about nine millions. But, soon after this, a war was 
entered on to compel the Americans to submit to be 
taxed by the Parliament, without being represented 
in that Parliament. The Americans triumphed, and, 
after the war was over, the annual interest of the Debt 
amounted to about nine millions, and the whole of 
the taxes to about fifteen millions. This was our 
situation when the French people began their Revolu- 
tion. The French people had so long been the 
slaves of a despotic government, that the friends of 
freedom in England rejoiced at their emancipation. 
The cause of Reform, which had never ceased to 
have supporters in England for a great many years, 
now acquired new life, and the Reformers urged the 
Parliament to grant reform, instead of going to war 
against the people of France. The Reformers said : 
' Give the nation reform, and you need fear no revo- 
lution.' The Parliament, instead of listening to the 
Reformers, crushed them, and went to war against 
the people of France ; and the consequence of these 
wars is, that the annual interest of the Debt now 
amounts to forty-five millions, and the whole of the 
taxes, during each of the last several years, to seventy 
millions. So that these wars have added thirty-six 
millions a year to the interest of the Debt, and fifty- 



Letter to the Journeymen 191 

five millions a year to the amount of the whole of 
the taxes ! This is the price that we have paid for 
having checked (for it is only checked) the progress of 
liberty in France ; for having forced upon that people 
the family of Bourbon, and for having enabled another 
branch of that same family to restore the bloody In- 
quisition, which Napoleon had put down. 

Since the restoration of the Bourbons and of the 
old Government of France has been, as far as pos- 
sible, the grand result of the contest ; since this has 
been the end of all our fightings and all our past 
sacrifices and present misery and degradation ; let us 
see (for the inquiry is now very full of interest) what 
sort of Government that was which the French people 
had just destroyed, when our Government began its 
wars against that people. 

If, only twenty-eight years ago, any man in England 
had said that the Government of France was one that 
ought to be suffered to exist, he would have been 
hooted out of any company. It is notorious that that 
Government was a cruel despotism ; and that we and 
our forefathers always called it such. This description 
of that Government is to be found in all our histories, 
in all our Parliamentary debates, in all our books on 
Government and politics. It is notorious, that the 
family of Bourbon has produced the most perfidious 
and bloody monsters that ever disgraced the human 
form. It is notorious that millions of Frenchmen 



i92 Political Pamphlets 

have been butchered, and burnt, and driven into exile 
by their commands. It is recorded, even in the 
history of France, that one of them said that the 
putrid carcass of a Protestant smelt sweet to him. 
Even in these latter times, so late as the reign of 
Louis XIV., it is notorious that hundreds of thousands 
of innocent people were put to the most cruel death. 
In some instances, they were burnt in their houses ; 
in others they were shut into lower rooms, while the 
incessant noise of kettle-drums over their heads, day 
and night, drove them to raving madness. To en- 
umerate all the infernal means employed by this 
tyrant to torture and kill the people, would fill a 
volume. Exile was the lot of those who escaped the 
swords, the wheels, the axes, the gibbets, the torches 
of his hell-hounds. England was the place of refuge 
for many of these persecuted people. The grand- 
father of the present Earl of Radnor, and the father 
of the venerable Baron Maseres were amongst them ; 
and it is well known that England owes no incon- 
siderable part of her manufacturing skill and industry 
to that atrocious persecution. Enemies of freedom, 
wherever it existed, this family of Bourbon, in the 
reign of Louis XIV. and XV., fitted out expeditions 
for the purpose of restoring the Stuarts to the throne of 
England, and thereby caused great expense and blood- 
shed to this nation ; and, even the Louis who was 
beheaded by his subjects, did, in the most perfidious 



Letter to the Journeymen 193 

manner, make war upon England, during her war with 
America. No matter what was the nature of the 
cause, his conduct was perfidious ; he professed peace 
while he was preparing for war. His object could 
not be to assist freedom, because his own subjects 
were slaves. 

Such was the family that were ruling in France when 
the French Revolution began. After it was resolved 
to go to war against the people of France, all the 
hirelings of corruption were set to work to gloss over 
the character and conduct of the old Government, 
and to paint in the most horrid colours the acts of 
vengeance which the people were inflicting on the 
numerous tyrants, civil, military, and ecclesiastical, 
whom the change of things had placed at their mercy. 
The people's turn was now come, and, in the days of 
their power, they justly bore in mind the oppressions 
which they and their forefathers had endured. The 
taxes imposed by the Government became at last 
intolerable. It had contracted a great debt to carry 
on its wars. In order to be able to pay the interest 
of this debt, and to support an enormous standing 
army in time of peace, it laid upon the people 
burdens which they could no longer endure. It 
fined and flogged fathers and mothers if their children 
were detected in smuggling. Its courts of justice 
were filled with cruel and base judges. The nobility 
treated the common people like dogs ; these latter 

o 



194 Political Pamphlets 

were compelled to serve as soldiers, but were excluded 
from all share, or chance of honour and command, 
which were engrossed by the nobility. 

Now, when the time came for the people to have 
the power in their hands, was it surprising that the 
first use they made of it was to take vengeance on their 
oppressors ? I will not answer this question myself. 
It shall be answered by Mr. Arthur Young, the pre- 
sent Secretary of the Board of Agriculture. He was 
in France at the time, and living upon the very spot, 
and having examined into the causes of the Revolu- 
tion, he wrote and published the following remarks, 
in his Travels •, vol. i. page 603 : — 

' It is impossible to justify the excesses of the people oh 
their taking up arms ; they were certainly guilty of cruelties ; it 
is idle to deny the facts, for they have been proved too clearly to 
admit of doubt. But is it really the people to whom we are to 
impute the whole ? Or to their oppressors, who had kept them 
so long in a state of bondage ? He who chooses to be served 
by slaves and by ill-treated slaves, must know that he holds 
both his property and his life by a tenure far different from 
those who prefer the service of well -treated freemen ; and he 
who dines to the music of groaning sufferers, must not, in the 
moment of insurrection, complain that his sons' throats are cut. 
When such evils happen, they surely are more imputable to the 
tyranny of the master than to the cruelty of the servant. The 
analogy holds with the French peasants. The murder of a 
seigneur, or a country seat in flames, is recorded in every news- 
paper ; the rank of the person who suffers attracts notice ; but 
where do we find the registers of that seigneur's oppressions of 



Letter to the Journeymen 195 

his peasantry, and his exactions of feudal services from those 
whose children were dying around them for want of bread ? 
Where do we find the minutes that assigned these starving 
wretches to some vile pettifogger, to be fleeced by impositions, 
and mockery of justice, in the seigneural courts ? Who gives us 
the awards of the Intendant and his sub-delegues, which took off 
the taxes of a man of fashion, and laid them with accumulated 
weight on the poor, who were so unfortunate as to be his neigh- 
bours? Who has dwelt sufficiently upon explaining all the 
ramifications of despotism, regal, aristocratical, and ecclesi- 
astical, pervading the whole mass of the people ; reaching, like 
a circulating fluid, the most distant capillary tubes of poverty and 
wretchedness ? In these cases the sufferers are too ignoble to 
be known ; and the mass too indiscriminate to be pitied. But 
should a philosopher feel and reason thus ? Should he mistake 
the cause for the effect ? and, giving all his pity to the few, feel 
no compassion for the many, because they suffer in his eyes not 
individually but by millions ? The excesses of the people can- 
not, I fear, be justified ; it would undoubtedly have done them 
credit, both as men and as Christians, if they had possessed their 
new acquired power with moderation. But let it be remem- 
bered that the populace in no country ever use power with 
moderation ; excess is inherent in their aggregate constitution : 
and as every Government in the world knows that violence 
infallibly attends power in such hands, it is doubly bound in 
common sense, and for common safety, so to conduct itself, that 
the people may not find an interest in public confusions. They 
will always suffer much and long, before they are effectually 
roused ; nothing, therefore, can kindle the flame but such 
oppressions of some classes or order in society as give able men 
the opportunity of seconding the general mass ; discontent will 
diffuse itself around ; and if the Government take not warning 
in time, it is alone answerable for all the burnings and all the 
plunderings and all the devastation and all the blood that follow. ' 



196 Political Pamphlets 

Who can deny the justice of these observations ? 
It was the Government alone that was justly charge- 
able with the excesses committed in this early stage, 
and, in fact, in every other stage, of the Revolution 
of France. If the Government had given way in 
time, none of these excesses would have been com- 
mitted. If it had listened to the complaints, the 
prayers, the supplications, the cries of the cruelly- 
treated and starving people ; if it had changed its 
conduct, reduced its expenses, it might have been 
safe under the protection of the peace-officers, and 
might have disbanded its standing army. But it 
persevered ; it relied upon the bayonet, and upon its 
judges and hangmen. The latter were destroyed, 
and the former went over to the side of the people. 
Was it any wonder that the people burnt the houses 
of their oppressors, and killed the owners and their 
families ? The country contained thousands upon 
thousands of men that had been ruined by taxation, 
and by judgments of infamous courts of justice, 'a 
mockery of justice ' ; and, when these ruined men 
saw their oppressors at their feet, was it any wonder 
that they took vengeance upon them ? Was it any 
wonder that the son, who had seen his father and 
mother flogged, because he, when a child, had 
smuggled a handful of salt, should burn for an occa- 
sion to shoot through the head the ruffians who had 
thus lacerated the bodies of his parents ? Moses slew 



Letter to the Journeymen 197 

the insolent Egyptian who had smitten one of his 
countrymen in bondage. Yet Moses has never been 
called either a murderer or a cruel wretch for this act ; 
and the bondage of the Israelites was light as a feather 
compared to the tyranny under which the people 
of France had groaned for ages. Moses resisted 
oppression in the only way that resistance was in his 
power. He knew that his countrymen had no chance 
of justice in any court ; he knew that petitions against 
his oppressors were all in vain ; and ' looking upon 
the burdens ' of his countrymen, he resolved to begin 
the only sort of resistance that was left him. Yet it 
was little more than a mere insult that drew forth 
his anger and resistance ; and, if Moses was justified, 
as he clearly was, what needs there any apology for 
the people of France ? 

It seems at first sight very strange that the Govern- 
ment of France should not have ' taken warning in 
time.' But it had so long been in the habit of 
despising the people that its mind was incapable of 
entertaining any notion of danger from the oppres- 
sions heaped upon them. It was surrounded with 
panders and parasites who told it nothing but flatter- 
ing falsehoods ; and it saw itself supported by two 
hundred and fifty thousand bayonets, which it thought 
irresistible ; though it found in the end that those who 
wielded those bayonets were not long so base as to be 
induced, either by threats or promises, to butcher their 



1 98 Political Pamphlets 

brothers and sisters and parents. And, if you ask me 
how it came to pass that they did not 'take warning 
in time,' I answer that they did take warning, but 
that, seeing that the change which was coming would 
deprive them of a great part of their power and 
emoluments, they resolved to resist the change, and 
to destroy the country, if possible, rather than not 
have all its wealth and power to themselves. The 
ruffian whom we read of, a little time ago, who 
stabbed a young woman because she was breaking 
from him to take the arm of another man whom she 
preferred, acted upon the principle of the ministers, 
the noblesse, and the clergy of France. They could no 
longer unjustly possess, therefore they would destroy. 
They saw that if a just government were established ; 
that if the people were fairly represented in a national 
council ; they saw that if this were to take place, they 
would no longer be able to wallow in wealth at the 
expense of the people ; and, seeing this, they resolved 
to throw all into confusion, and, if possible, to make 
a heap of ruins of that country which they could no 
longer oppress, and the substance of which they could 
no longer devour. 

Talk of violence indeed ! Was there anything too 
violent, anything too severe to be inflicted on these 
men ? It was they who produced confusion ; it was 
they who caused the massacres and guillotinings ; it 
was they who destroyed the kingly government ; it was 



Letter to the Journeymen 199 

they who brought the king to the block. They were 
answerable for all and for every single part of the 
mischief, as much as Pharaoh was for the plagues in 
Egypt, which history of Pharaoh seems, by the bye, to 
be intended as a lesson to all future tyrants. He ' set 
taskmasters over the Israelites to afflict them with bur- 
dens; and he made them build treasure cities for him; 
he made them serve with rigour ; he made their lives 
bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, 
and in all manner of service of the field ; he denied 
them straw, and insisted upon their making the same 
quantity of bricks, and because they were unable to 
obey, the taskmasters called them idle and beat 
them.' Was it too much to scourge and to destroy 
all the first-born of men who could tolerate, assist, 
and uphold a tyrant like this ? Yet was Pharaoh less 
an oppressor than the old government of France. 

Thus, then, we have a view of the former state of 
that country, by wars against the people of which we 
have been brought into our present state of misery. 
There are many of the hirelings of corruption, who 
actually insist on it that we ought now to go to war 
again for the restoring of all the cruel despotism 
which formerly existed in France. This is what can- 
not be done, however. Our wars have sent back the 
Bourbons ; but the tithes, the seigneurs, and many 
other curses have not been restored. The French 
people still enjoy much of the benefit of the Revolu- 



200 Political Pamphlets 

tion ; and great numbers of their ancient petty tyrants 
have been destroyed. So that even were things to 
remain as they are, the French people have gained 
greatly by their Revolution. But things cannot remain 
as they are. Better days are at hand. 

In proceeding now to examine the remedies for 
your distresses, I shall first notice some of those which 
foolish, or cruel and insolent men have proposed. 
Seeing that the cause of your misery is the weight of 
taxation, one would expect to hear of nothing but a 
reduction of taxation in the way of remedy ; but from 
the friends of corruption never do we hear of any 
such remedy. To hear them, one would think that 
you had been the guilty cause of the misery you suffer; 
and that you, and you alone, ought to be made answer- 
able for what has taken place. The emissaries of cor- 
ruption are now continually crying out against the 
weight of the Poor-rates, and they seem to regard all 
that is taken in that way as a dead loss to the Govern- 
ment ! Their project is to deny relief to all who are 
able to work. But what is the use of your being able 
to work, if no one will, or can, give you work ? To 
tell you that you must work for your bread, and, at 
the same time, not to find any work for you, is full 
as bad as it would be to order you to make bricks 
without straw. Indeed, it is rather more cruel and 
insolent ; for Pharaoh's taskmasters did point out to 
the Israelites that they might go into the fields and 



Letter to the Journeymen 201 

get stubble. The Courier newspaper of the 9th of 
October, says, 'We must thus be cruel only to be 
kind.' I am persuaded that you will not understand 
this kindness, while you will easily understand the 
cruelty. The notion of these people seems to be that 
everybody that receives money out of the taxes has 
a right to receive it, except you. They tremble at 
the fearful amount of the Poor-rates : they say, and 
very truly, that those rates have risen from two and 
a half to eight or ten millions since the beginning of 
the wars against the people of France ; they think, and 
not without reason, that these rates will soon swallow 
up nearly all the rent of the land. These assertions 
and apprehensions are perfectly well founded ; but 
how can you help it ? You have not had the manage- 
ment of the affairs of the nation. It is not you who 
have ruined the farmers and tradesmen. You only 
want food and raiment : you are ready to work for 
it ; but yon cannot go naked and without food. 

But the complaints of these persons against you 
are the moie unreasonable, because they say not a 
word against the sums paid to sinecure placemen and 
pensioners. Of the five hundred and more Corre- 
spondents of the Board of Agriculture, there are 
scarcely ten who do not complain of the weight of 
the Poor-rates, of the immense sums taken away from 
them by the poor, and many of them complain of 
the idleness of the poor. But not one single man 



202 Political Pamphlets 

complains of the immense sums taken away to sup- 
port sinecure placemen, who do nothing for their 
money, and to support pensioners, many of whom 
are women and children, the wives and daughters of 
the nobility and other persons in high life, and 
who can do nothing, and never can have done any- 
thing for what they receive. There are of these 
places and pensions all sizes, from twenty pounds 
to thirty thousand and nearly forty thousand pounds 
a year ! And surely these ought to be done 
away before any proposition be made to take the 
parish allowance from any of you who are unable to 
work, or to find work to do. There are several 
individual placemen, the profits of each of which 
would maintain a thousand families. The names of 
the ladies upon the pension list would, if printed, one 
under another, fill a sheet of paper like tiis. And 
is it not, then, base and cruel at the same time in 
these Agricultural correspondents to cry out so loudly 
against the charge of supporting the unformnate poor, 
while they utter not a word of complain: against the 
sinecure places and pensions ? 

The unfortunate journeymen and labourers and 
their families have a right, they have a just claim, to 
relief from the purses of the rich. For there can exist 
no riches and no resources which they by their labour 
have not assisted to create. But I should be glad to 
know how the sinecure placemen and lady pensioners 



Letter to the Journeymen 203 

have assisted to create food and raiment, or the 
means of producing them. The labourer who is out 
of work or ill, to-day, may be able to work, and set 
to work to-morrow. While those placemen and 
pensioners never can work ; or, at least, it is clear 
that they never intend to do it. 

You have been represented by the Times news- 
paper, by the Courier, by the Morning Post, by the 
Morning Herald, and others, as the scum of society. 
They say that you have no business at public meet- 
ings ; that you are rabble, and that you pay no taxes. 
These insolent hirelings, who wallow in wealth, would 
not be able to put their abuse of you in print were it 
not for your labour. You create all that is an object 
of taxation ; for even the land itself would be good 
for nothing without your labour. But are you not 
taxed ? Do you pay no taxes ? One of the corre- 
spondents of the Board of Agriculture has said that 
care has been taken to lay as little tax as possible on 
the articles used by you. One would wonder how a 
man could be found impudent enough to put an asser- 
tion like this upon paper. But the people of this 
country have so long been insulted by such men, that 
the insolence of the latter knows no bounds. 

The tax gatherers do not, indeed, come to you and 
demand money of you : but there are few articles 
which you use, in the purchase of which you do not 
pay a tax. 



204 Political Pamphlets 

On your shoes, salt, beer, malt, hops, tea, sugar, 
candles, soap, paper, coffee, spirits, glass of your 
windows, bricks and tiles, tobacco : on all these, and 
many other articles you pay a tax, and even on your 
loaf you pay a tax, because everything is taxed from 
which the loaf proceeds. In several cases the tax 
amounts to more than one half of what you pay for 
the article itself; these taxes go in part to support 
sinecure placemen and pensioners ; and the ruffians 
of the hired press call you the scum of society, and 
deny that you have any right to show your faces at 
any public meeting to petition for a reform, or for 
the removal of any abuse whatever ! 

Mr. Preston, whom I quoted before, and who is a 
member of Parliament and has a large estate, says 
upon this subject, ' Every family, even of the poorest 
labourer, consisting of five persons, may be considered 
as paying, in indirect taxes, at least ten pounds a year, 
or more than half his wages at seven shillings a week ! ' 
And yet the insolent hirelings call you the mob, the 
rabble, the scum, the swinish multitude, and say that 
your voice is nothing ; that you have no business at 
public meetings ; and that you are, and ought to be 
considered as nothing in the body politic ! Shall we 
never see the day when these men will change their 
tone ! Will they never cease to look upon us [as 
on] brutes ! I trust they will change their tone, and 
that the day of the change is at no great distance ! 



Letter to the Journeymen 205 

The weight of the Poor-rate, which must increase 
while the present system continues, alarms the cor- 
rupt, who plainly see that what is paid to relieve you, 
they cannot have. Some of them, therefore, hint at 
your early marriages as a great evil, and a clergyman 
named Malthus has seriously proposed measures for 
checking you in this respect ; while one of the corre- 
spondents of the Board of Agriculture complains of the 
increase of bastards, and proposes severe punishment 
on the parents ! How hard these men are to please ! 
What would they have you do ? As some have called 
you the swinish multitude, would it be much wonder 
if they were to propose to serve you as families of 
young pigs are served? Or if they were to bring 
forward the measure of Pharaoh, who ordered the 
midwives to kill all the male children of the Israelites ? 

But, if you can restrain your indignation at these 
insolent notions and schemes, with what feelings must 
you look upon the condition of your country, where 
the increase of the people is now looked upon as 
a curse ! Thus, however, has it always been, in all 
countries where taxes have produced excessive misery. 
Our countryman, Mr. Gibbon, in his History of the 
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, has the 
following passage : ' The horrid practice of murdering 
their new-born infants was become every day more 
frequent in the provinces. It was the effect of distress, 
and the distress was principally occasioned by the 



206 Political Pamphlets 

intolerable burden of taxes, and by the vexatious as well 
as cruel prosecutions of the officers of the revenue 
against their insolvent debtors. The less opulent or 
less industrious part of mankind, instead of rejoicing 
at an increase of family, deemed it an act of paternal 
tenderness to release the children from the impending 
miseries of a life which they themselves were unable 
to support.' 

But that which took place under the base Emperor 
Constantine will not take place in England. You will 
not murder your new-born infants, nor will you, to 
please the corrupt and insolent, debar yourselves from 
enjoyments to which you are invited by the very first 
of Nature's laws. It is, however, a disgrace to the 
country that men should be found in it capable of 
putting ideas so insolent upon paper. So, then, a 
young man arm-in-arm with a rosy-cheeked girl must 
be a spectacle of evil omen ! What ! and do they 
imagine that you are thus to be extinguished, because 
some of you are now (without any fault of yours) 
unable to find work ? As far as you were wanted to 
labour, to fight, or to pay taxes, you were welcome, 
and they boasted of your numbers ; but now that 
your country has been brought into a state of misery, 
these corrupt and insolent men are busied with 
schemes for getting rid of you. Just as if you had 
not as good a right to live and to love and to marry 
as they have ! They do not propose, far from it, to 



Letter to the Journeymen 207 

check the breeding of sinecure placemen and pen- 
sioners, who are supported in part by the taxes which 
you help to pay. They say not a word about the 
whole families who are upon the pension list. In 
many cases there are sums granted in trust for the 
children of such a lord or such a lady. And while 
labourers and journeymen who have large families 
too, are actually paying taxes for the support of these 
lords' and ladies' children, these cruel and insolent 
men propose that they shall have no relief, and that 
their having children ought to be checked ! To such 
a subject no words can do justice. You will feel as 
you ought to feel ; and to the effect of your feelings 
I leave these cruel and insolent men. 

There is one more scheme to notice, which, though 
rather less against nature is not less hateful and in- 
solent; namely, to encourage you to emigrate to foreign 
countries. This scheme is distinctly proposed to the 
Government by one of the correspondents of the 
Board of Agriculture. What he means by encourage- 
ment must be to send away by force, or by paying for 
the passage ; for a man who has money stands in no 
need of relief. But, I trust, that not a man of you will 
move, let the encouragement be what it may. It is im- 
possible for many to go, though the prospect be ever so 
fair. We must stand by our country, and it is base not 
to stand by her, as long as there is a chance of seeing 
her what she ought to be. But the proposition is, 



208 Political Pamphlets 

nevertheless, base and insolent. This man did not 
propose to encourage the sinecure placemen and pen- 
sioners to emigrate; yet, surely, you who help to main- 
tain them by the taxes which you pay, have as good a 
right to remain in the country as they have ! You have 
fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers and 
children and friends as well as they ; but this base 
projector recommends that you may be encouraged 
to leave your relations and friends for ever; while 
he would have the sinecure placemen and pensioners 
remain quietly where they are ! 

No : you will not leave your country. If you 
have suffered much and long, you have the greater 
right to remain in the hope of seeing better days. 
And I beseech you not to look upon yourselves as the 
scum ; but, on the contrary, to be well persuaded that 
a great deal will depend upon your exertions ; and 
therefore, I now proceed to point out to you what 
appears to me to be the line of conduct which 
journeymen and labourers ought to pursue in order 
to obtain effectual relief, and to assist in promot- 
ing tranquillity and restoring the happiness of the 
country. 

We have seen that the cause of our miseries is the 
burden of taxes occasioned by wars, by standing 
armies, by sinecures, by pensions, etc. It would 
be endless and useless to enumerate all the different 
heads or sums of expenditure. The remedy is what 



Letter to the Journeymen 209 

we have now to look to, and that remedy consists 
wholly and solely of such a reform in the Commons' 
or People's House of Parliament, as shall give to 
every payer of direct taxes a vote at elections, and as 
shall cause the Members to be elected annually. 

In a late Register I have pointed out how easily, 
how peaceably, how fairly, such a Parliament might 
be chosen. I am aware that it may, and not without 
justice, be thought wrong to deprive those of the 
right of voting who pay indirect taxes. Direct taxes 
are those which are directly paid by any person into the 
hands of the tax-gatherers, as the assessed rates and 
taxes. Indirect taxes are those which are paid in- 
directly through the maker or seller of goods, as the 
tax on soap or candles or salt or malt. And, as no 
man ought to be taxed without his consent, there has 
always been a difficulty upon this head. There has 
been no question about the right of every man who is 
free to exercise his will, who has a settled place in 
society, and who pays a tax of any sort, to vote for 
Members of Parliament. The difficulty is in taking the 
votes by any other means than by the Rate-book ; for 
if there be no list of tax -payers in the hands of any 
person, mere menial servants, vagrants, pickpockets, 
and scamps of all sorts might not only come to the 
poll, but they might poll in several parishes or places, 
on one and the same day. A corrupt rich man 
might employ scores of persons of this description, and 

p 



210 Political Pamphlets 

in this way would the purpose of reform be completely 
defeated. In America, where one branch of the Con- 
gress is elected for four years and the other for two 
years, they have still adhered to the principle of direct 
taxation, and in some of the States they have made 
it necessary for a voter to be worth one hundred 
pounds. Yet they have, in that country, duties on 
goods, custom duties, and excise duties also \ and, of 
course, there are many persons who really pay taxes, 
and who, nevertheless, are not permitted to vote. 
The people do not complain of this. They know 
that the number of votes is so great that no corruption 
can take place, and they have no desire to see livery 
servants, vagrants, and pickpockets take part in their 
elections. Nevertheless it would be very easy for 
a reformed Parliament, when once it had taken 
root, to make a just arrangement of this matter. 
The most likely method would be to take off the 
indirect taxes, and to put a small direct tax upon 
every master of a house, however low his situation 
in life. 

But this and all other good things, must be done by 
a reformed Parliament. We must have that first, or we 
shall have nothing good ; and any man who would be- 
forehand take up your time with the detail of what 
a reformed Parliament ought to do in this respect, or 
with respect to any changes in the form of govern- 
ment, can have no other object than that of defeating 



Letter to the Journeymen 211 

the cause of reform ; and, indeed, the very act must 
show, that to raise obstacles is his wish. 

Such men, now that they find you justly irritated, 
would persuade you that, because things have been per- 
verted from their true ends, there is nothing good in 
our constitution and laws. For what, then, did Hamp- 
den die in the field, and Sydney on the scaffold? 
And has it been discovered at last that England has 
always been an enslaved country from top to toe? 
The Americans, who are a very wise people, and who 
love liberty with all their hearts, and who take care to 
enjoy it too, took special care not to part with any of 
the great principles and laws which they derived from 
their forefathers. They took special care to speak 
with reverence of, and to preserve Magna Charta, the 
Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, and not only all 
the body of the Common Law of England, but most 
of the rules of our courts, and all our form of juris- 
prudence. Indeed it is the greatest glory of England 
that she has thus supplied with sound principles of 
freedom those immense regions which will be peopled 
perhaps by hundreds of millions. 

I know of no enemy of reform and of the happiness 
of the country so great as that man who would persuade 
you that we possess nothing good, and that all must 
be torn to pieces. There is no principle, no precedent, 
no regulations (except as to mere matter of detail), 
favourable to freedom, which is not to be found in the 



212 Political Pamphlets 

Laws of England or in the example of our ancestors. 
Therefore I say we may ask for, and we want nothing 
new. We have great constitutional laws and principles 
to which we are immovably attached. We want great 
alteration, but we want nothing new. Alteration, 
modification, to suit the times and circumstances ; but 
the great principles ought to be and must be the 
same, or else confusion will follow. 

It was the misfortune of the French people that 
they had no great and settled principles to refer to in 
their laws or history. They sallied forth and inflicted 
vengeance on their oppressors ; but, for want of settled 
principles to which to refer they fell into confusion ; 
they massacred each other ; they next flew to a military 
chief to protect them even against themselves ; and 
the result has been what we too well know. Let us 
therefore congratulate ourselves that we have great 
constitutional principles and laws, to which we can 
refer, and to which we are attached. 

That reform will come I know, if the people do 
their duty ; and all that we have to guard against is 
confusion, which cannot come if reform take place in 
time. I have before observed to you that when the 
friends of corruption in France saw that they could not 
prevent a change, they bent their endeavours to produce 
confusion, in which they fully succeeded. They em- 
ployed numbers of unprincipled men to go about the 
country proposing all sorts of mad schemes. They pro- 



Letter to the Journeymen 213 

duced first a confusion in men's minds, and next a 
civil war between provinces, towns, villages and 
families. The tyrant Robespierre, who was exceeded 
in cruelty only by some of the Bourbons, was proved 
to have been in league with the open enemies of France. 
He butchered all the real friends of freedom whom he 
could lay his hands on, except Paine, whom he shut up 
in a dungeon till he was reduced to a skeleton. This 
monster was at last put to death himself; and his 
horrid end ought to be a warning to any man who 
may wish to walk in the same path. But I am, for my 
part, in little fear of the influence of such men. They 
cannot cajole you as Robespierre cajoled the people 
of Paris. It is, nevertheless, necessary for you to be 
on your guard against them, and when you hear a man 
talking big and hectoring about projects which go further 
than a real and radical reform of the Parliament, be 
you well assured that that man would be a second Robe- 
spierre if he could, and that he would make use of you 
and sacrifice the life of the very last man of you ; that 
he would ride upon the shoulders of some through rivers 
of the blood of others, for the purpose of gratifying 
his own selfish and base and insolent ambition. 

In order effectually to avoid the rock of confusion, 
we should keep steadily in our eye not only what we 
wish to be done but what can be done now. We 
know that such a reform as would send up a Parliament, 
chosen by all payers of direct taxes, is not only just and 



214 Political Pamphlets 

reasonable, but easy of execution. I am therefore 
for accomplishing that object first ; and I am not at 
all afraid that a set of men who would really hold the 
purse of the people, and who had been just chosen 
freely by the people, would very soon do everything that 
the warmest friend of freedom could wish to see done. 

While, however, you are upon your guard against 
false friends, you should neglect no opportunity of 
doing all that is within your power to give support to 
the cause of reform. Petition is the channel for your 
sentiments, and there is no village so small that its 
petition would not have some weight. You ought to 
attend at every public meeting within your reach. You 
ought to read to and to assist, each other in coming at 
a competent knowledge of all public matters. Above 
all things, you ought to be unanimous in your object, 
and not suffer yourselves to be divided. 

The subject of religion has nothing to do with 
this great question of reform. A reformed Parlia- 
ment would soon do away with all religious distinc- 
tions and disabilities. In their eyes, a Catholic and a 
Protestant would both appear in the same light. 

The Courier, the Times, and other emissaries of cor- 
ruption, are constantly endeavouring to direct your 
wrath against bakers, brewers, butchers, and other 
persons who deal in the necessaries of life. But, I 
trust that you are not to be stimulated to such a 
species of violence. These tradesmen are as mucli 



Letter to the Journeymen 215 

in distress as you. They cannot help their malt and 
hops and beer and bread and meat being too dear 
for you to purchase. They all sell as cheap as they 
can, without being absolutely ruined. The beer you 
drink is more than half tax, and when the tax has 
been paid by the seller he must have payment back 
again from you who drink, or he must be ruined. 
The baker has numerous taxes to pay, and so has the 
butcher, and so has the miller and the farmer. Be- 
sides, all men are eager to sell, and, if they could sell 
cheaper they certainly would, because that would be 
the sure way of getting more custom. It is the weight 
of the taxes which presses us all to the earth, except 
those who receive their incomes out of those taxes. 
Therefore I exhort you most earnestly not to be in- 
duced to lay violent hands on those who really suffer 
as much as yourselves. 

On the subject of lowering wages too, you ought 
to consider that your employers cannot give to you 
that which they have not. At present, corn is high in 
price, but that high price is no benefit to the farmer, 
because it has risen from the badness of the crop, 
which Mr. Hunt foretold at the Common Hall, and for 
the foretelling of which he was so much abused by the 
hirelings of the press, who, almost up to this very 
moment, have been boasting and thanking God for 
the goodness of the crop ! The farmer whose corn is 
half destroyed, gains nothing by selling the remaining 



2i 6 Political Pamphlets 

half for double the price at which he would have 
sold the whole. If I grow 10 quarters of wheat, and 
if I save it all and sell it for two pounds a quarter, I re- 
ceive as much money as if I had sold the one-half of 
it for four pounds a quarter. And I am better off in 
the former case, because I want wheat for seed, and be- 
cause I want some to consume myself. These matters 
I recommend to your serious consideration ; because it 
being unjust to fall upon your employers to force them 
to give that which they have not to give, your conduct 
in such cases must tend to weaken the great cause in 
which we ought all now to be engaged, namely the re- 
moval of our burdens through the means of a reformed 
Parliament. It is the interest of vile men of all 
descriptions to set one part of the people against 
the other part ; and therefore it becomes you to be 
constantly on your guard against their allurements. 

When journeymen find their wages reduced, they 
should take time to reflect on the real cause, before 
they fly on their employers, who are in many cases in as 
great or greater distress than themselves. How many 
of those employers have of late gone to jail for debt 
and left helpless families behind them ! The em- 
ployer's trade falls off. His goods are reduced in 
price. His stock loses the half of its value. He 
owes money. He is ruined ; and how can he con- 
tinue to pay high wages ? The cause of his ruin is 
the weight of the taxes, which presses so heavily on us 



Letter to the Journeymen 217 

all, that we lose the power of purchasing goods. But it 
is certain that a great many, a very large portion of 
the farmers, tradesmen, and manufacturers, have, by 
their supineness and want of public spirit, contributed 
towards the bringing of this ruin upon themselves and 
upon you. They have skulked from their public duty. 
They have kept aloof from, or opposed all measures 
for a redress of grievances; and indeed, they still skulk, 
though ruin and destruction stare them in the face. 
Why do they not now come forward and explain to 
you the real cause of the reduction of your wages ? 
Why do they not put themselves at your head in peti- 
tioning for redress ? This would secure their property 
much better than the calling in of troops, which can 
never afford them more than a short and precarious 
security. In the days of their prosperity they were 
amply warned of what has now come to pass ; and the 
far greater part of them abused and calumniated those 
who gave them the warning. Even if they would now 
act the part of men worthy of being relieved, the relief 
to us all would speedily follow. If they will not; 
if they will still skulk, they will merit all the miseries 
which they are destined to suffer. 

Instead of coming forward to apply for a reduction 
of those taxes which are pressing them as well as you 
to the earth, what are they doing ? Why, they are 
applying to the Government to add to their receipts 
by passing Corn Bills, by preventing foreign wool from 



218 Political Pamphlets 

being imported ; and many other silly schemes. In- 
stead of asking for a reduction of taxes they are ask- 
ing for the means of paying taxes ! Instead of asking 
for the abolition of sinecure places and pensions, they 
pray to be enabled to continue to pay the amount of 
those places and pensions ! They know very well that 
the salaries of the judges and of many other persons 
were greatly raised, some years ago, on the ground of 
the rise in the price of labour and provisions, why 
then do they not ask to have those salaries reduced, 
now that labour is reduced ? Why do they not apply 
to the case of the judges and others the arguments 
which they apply to you ? They can talk boldly enough 
to you ; but they are too great cowards to talk to the 
Government, even in the way of petition ! Far more 
honourable is it to be a ragged pauper than to be 
numbered among such men. 

These people call themselves the respectable part of 
the nation. They are, as they pretend, the virtuous 
part of the people, because they are quiet ; as if 
virtue consisted in immobility ! There is a canting 
Scotchman in London, who publishes a paper called 
the l Champion] who is everlastingly harping upon 
the virtues of the ' fireside,' and who inculcates the 
duty of quiet submission. Might we ask this Cham- 
pion of the teapot and milk-jug whether Magna 
Charta and the Bill of Rights were won by the fire- 
side ? Whether the tyrants of the House of Stuart 



Letter to the Journeymen 219 

and of Bourbon were hurled down by fireside virtues ? 
Whether the Americans gained their independence, 
and have preserved their freedom, by sitting by the fire- 
side ? O, no ! these were all achieved by action, and 
amidst bustle and noise. Quiet indeed ! Why in 
this quality a log, or a stone, far surpasses even the 
pupils of this Champion of quietness ; and the chairs 
round his fireside exceed those who sit in them. But 
in order to put these quiet, fireside, respectable people 
to the test, let us ask them if they approve of drunken- 
ness, breaches of the peace, black eyes, bloody noses, 
fraud, bribery, corruption, perjury, and subornation of 
perjury; and if they say no, let us ask them whether these 
are not going on all over the country at every general 
election. If they answer yes, as they must unless they 
be guilty of wilful falsehood, will they then be so good 
as to tell us how they reconcile their inactivity with 
sentiments of virtue ? Some men, in all former ages, 
have been held in esteem for their wisdom, their genius, 
their skill, their valour, their devotion to country, etc., 
but never until this age, was quietness deemed a quality 
to be extolled. It would be no difficult matter to 
show that the quiet, fireside gentry are the most callous 
and cruel, and, therefore, the most wicked part of the 
nation. Amongst them it is that you find all the 
peculators, all the blood-suckers of various degrees, all 
the borough-voters and their offspring, all the selfish 
and unfeeling wretches, who, rather than risk the dis- 



220 Political Pamphlets 

turbing of their ease for one single month, rather than 
go a mile to hold up their hand at a public meet- 
ing, would see half the people perish with hunger and 
cold. The humanity, which is continually on their lips, 
is all fiction. They weep over the tale of woe in a 
novel; but round their 'decent fireside,' never was 
compassion felt for a real sufferer, or indignation at 
the acts of a powerful tyrant. 

The object of the efforts of such writers is clearly 
enough seen. Keep all quiet ! Do not rouse ! Keep 
still ! Keep down ! Let those who perish, perish in 
silence ! It will, however, be out of the power of these 
quacks, with all their laudanum, to allay the blood 
which is now boiling in the veins of the people of this 
kingdom ; who, if they are doomed to perish, are at 
any rate resolved not to perish in silence. The 
writer whom I have mentioned above, says that he, 
of course, does not count 'the lower classes, who, 
under the pressure of need or under the influence 
of ignorant prejudice, may blindly and weakly rush 
upon certain and prompt punishment ; but that the 
security of every decent fireside, every respectable 
father's best hopes for his children, still connect them- 
selves with the Government' And by Government he 
clearly means all the mass as it now stands. There is 
nobody so callous and so insolent as your sentimental 
quacks and their patients. How these 'decent fire- 
side ' people would stare, if some morning they were 



Letter to the Journeymen 221 

to come down and find them occupied by uninvited 
visitors ! I hope they never will. I hope that things 
will never come to this pass : but if one thing more 
than any other tends to produce so sad an effect, it is 
the cool insolence with which such men as this writer 
treats the most numerous and most suffering classes 
of the people. 

Long as this Address already is, I cannot con- 
clude without some observations on the ' Charity Sub- 
scriptions ' at the London Tavern. The object of this 
subscription professes to be to afford relief to the dis- 
tressed labourers, etc. About forty thousand pounds 
have been subscribed, and there is no probability of 
its going much further. There is an absurdity on the 
face of the scheme ; for, as all parishes are compelled 
by law to afford relief to every person in distress, it 
is very clear that, as far as money is given by these 
people to relieve the poor, there will be so much 
saved in the parish rates. But the folly of the thing 
is not what I wish you most to attend to. Several 
of the subscribers to this fund receive each of them 
more than ten thousand pounds and some more 
than thirty thousand pounds each, out of those taxes 
which you help to pay, and which emoluments not a 
man of them proposes to give up. The clergy appear 
very forward in this subscription. An Archbishop and 
a Bishop assisted at the forming of the scheme. Now 
then, observe that there has been given out of the taxes, 



222 Political Pamphlets 

for several years past, one hundred thousand pounds 
a year, for what, think you ? Why for the relief of the 
poor clergy ! I have no account at hand later than that 
delivered last year, and there I find this sum ! — for the 
poor clergy ! The rich clergy do not pay this sum ; 
but it comes out of those taxes, part, and a large part 
of which you pay on your beer, malt, salt, shoes, etc. I 
daresay that the ' decent firesides ' of these poor clergy 
still connect themselves with the Government. Amongst 
all our misery we have had to support the intolerable 
disgrace of being an object of the charity of a Bourbon 
Prince, while we are paying for supporting that family 
upon the throne of France. Well ! But is this all ? 
We are taxed, at the very same moment, for the sup- 
port of the French Emigrants ! And you shall see to 
what amount. Nay, not only French, but Dutch and 
others, as appears from the forementioned account 
laid before Parliament last year. The sum, paid out 
of the taxes, in one year, for the relief of suffering 
French Clergy and Laity, St. Domingo Sufferers, Dutch 
Emigrants, Corsican Emigrants, was one hundred and 
eighty-seven thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds; 
yes, one hundred and eighty -seven thousand seven 
hundred and fifty pounds paid to this set in one year 
out of those taxes of which you pay so large a share, 
while you are insulted with a subscription to relieve you, 
and while there are projectors who have the audacity to 
recommend schemes for preventing you from marrying 



Letter to the Journeymen 223 

while young, and to induce you to emigrate from 
your country ! I'll venture my life that the ' decent fire- 
sides ' of all this swarm of French clergy and laity, and 
Dutch, and Corsicans, and St Domingo sufferers 'still 
connect themselves closely with the Government'; and 
I will also venture my life that you do "not stand in 
need of one more word to warm every drop of blood 
remaining in your bodies ! As to the money subscribed 
by regiments of soldiers, whose pay arises from taxes 
in part paid by you, though it is a most shocking 
spectacle to behold, I do not think so much of it. 
The soldiers are your fathers, brothers, and sons. But 
if they were all to give their whole pay, and if they 
amount to one hundred and fifty thousand men, it 
would not amount to one -half of what is now paid in 
Poor-rates, and of course would not add half a pound of 
bread to every pound which the unhappy paupers now 
receive. All the expenses of the Army and Ordnance 
amount to an enormous sum — to sixteen or eighteen 
millions ; but the pay of one hundred and fifty thousand 
men, at a shilling a day each, amounts to no more than 
two million seven hundred and twelve thousand five 
hundred pounds. So that, supposing them all to receive 
a shilling a day each, the soldiers receive only about a 
third part of the sum now paid annually in Poor-rates. 
I have no room, nor have I any desire, to appeal 
to your passions upon this occasion. I have laid before 
you, with all the clearness I am master of, the causes 



224 Political Pamphlets 

of our misery, the measures which have led to those 
causes, and I have pointed out what appears to me 
to be the only remedy — namely a reform of the 
Commons', or People's House of Parliament. I 
exhort you to proceed in a peaceable and lawful 
manner, but at the same time to proceed with zeal and 
resolution in the attainment of this object. If the 
skulkers will not join you, if the 'decent fireside' 
gentry still keep aloof, proceed by yourselves. Any 
man can draw up a petition, and any man can carry 
it up to London, with instructions to deliver it into 
trusty hands, to be presented whenever the House 
shall meet. Some further information will be given 
as to this matter in a future Number. In the mean- 
while, I remain your Friend, Wm. Cobbett. 



To Jack Harrow, an English Labourer 

On the new Cheat which is now on foot \ and which 
goes under the name of Savings Banks 

North Hampstead, Long Island, 
November Jth^ 1818. 

Friend Jack — You sometimes hear the Parson 
talk about deceivers, who go about in sheep's clothing; 
but who inwardly are ravening wolves. You frequently 
hear of the tricks of the London cheats, and I dare- 



Letter to Jack Harrow 225 

say you have often enough witnessed those of mounte- 
banks and gypsies. But, Jack, all the tricks of these 
deceivers and cheaters, if the trickery of them all 
were put together, would fall far short of the trick now 
playing off under the name of Savings Banks. And 
seeing that it is possible that you may be exposed to 
the danger of having a few pounds picked out of your 
pocket by this trick, I think it right to put you on 
your guard against the cheat. 

You have before been informed of who and what 
the Boroughmongers are. Therefore, at present, I 
shall enter into no explanation of their recent conduct. 
But, in order to give you a clear view of their motives 
in this new trick, and which, I think, is about the last 
in their budget, I must go back and tell you'something 
of the history of their Debt, and of what are called 
the Funds. Some years ago the Boroughmongers 
put me into a loathsome prison for two years, made 
me pay a thousand pounds fine, and made me enter 
into recognisances for seven years, only because I 
expressed my indignation at the flogging of English- 
men, in the heart of England, under the superintend- 
ence of hired German troops brought into the country 
to keep the people in awe. It pleased God, Jack, 
to preserve my life and health, while I was in that 
prison. And I employed a part of my time in 
writing a little book entitled Paper against Gold. 
In this little book I fully explained all the frauds of 

Q 



226 Political Pamphlets 

what is called the National Debt, and of what are 
called the Funds. But as it is possible that you may 
not have seen that little book, I will here tell you 
enough about these things to make you see the 
reasons for the Boroughmongers using this trick of 
Savings Banks. 

The Boroughmongers are, you know, those persons 
(some Lords, some Baronets, and some Esquires, as 
they call themselves) who fill, or nominate others to 
fill, the seats in the House of Commons. Commons 
means the mass of the people. So that this is the 
House of the People, according to the law of the 
land. The people — you, I, and all of us, ought to 
vote for the men who sit in this House. But the 
said Lords, Baronets, and Esquires have taken our 
rights away, and they nominate the Members them- 
selves. A monger is a dealer, as ironmonger, cheese- 
monger, and the like : and as the Lords, Baronets, 
and Esquires sometimes sell and sometimes buy seats, 
and as the seats are said to be filled by the people in 
certain Boroughs, these Lords, Baronets, and Esquires 
are very properly called Boroughmongers ; that is to 
say, dealers in boroughs or in the seats of boroughs. 
As all laws and all other matters of government are 
set up and enforced at the will of the two Houses, 
against whose will the king cannot stir hand or foot ; 
and as the Boroughmongers fill the seats of the two 
Houses, they have all the power, and, of course, the king 



Letter to Jack Harrow 227 

and the people have none. Being possessed of all the 
power ; being able to tax us at their pleasure ; being 
able to hang us for whatever they please to call a 
crime ; they will, of course, do with our property and 
persons just what they please. And accordingly, they 
take from us more than the half of our earnings ; and 
they keep soldiers (whom they deceive) to shoot at 
us and kill us, if we attempt to resist. They put us 
in dungeons when they like. And, in Ireland, they 
compel people to remain shut up in their houses from 
sunset to sunrise, and if any man, contrary to their 
commands, goes out of his house in the night, in 
order to go to the privy, they punish him very 
severely ; and in that unhappy country they transport 
men and women to Botany Bay without any trial by 
jury, and merely by the orders of two justices of the 
peace appointed by themselves. 

This, Jack, is horrid work to be going on amongst 
a people who call themselves free ; amongst a people 
who boast of their liberties. But the facts are so ; 
and now I shall explain to you how the Borough- 
mongers, who are so few in number compared to the 
whole people, are able to commit these cruel acts and 
to carry on this abominable tyranny ; and you will 
see that the trick of Savings Banks makes a part of 
the means, which they now intend to use for the per- 
petuating of this tyranny. 

Formerly, more than a hundred years ago, when 



228 Political Pamphlets 

the kings of England had some real power, and before 
the Boroughmongers took all the powers of king and 
people into their hands, the people, when the kings 
behaved amiss, used to rise against them and compel 
them to act justly. They beheaded Charles the First 
about one hundred and seventy years ago ; and they 
drove James the Second out of the kingdom ; they 
went so far as to set his family aside for ever, and 
they put up the present royal family in its stead. 

This was all very well ; but when King James had 
been driven out, the Lords and Baronets and Squires 
conceived the notion of ruling for ever over king and 
people. They made Parliaments, which used to be 
annual, three years of duration ; and when the mem- 
bers had been elected for three years, the members 
themselves made a law to make the people obey them 
for seven years. Thus was the usurpation completed ; 
and from that time to this the Boroughmongers have 
filled the seats just as it has pleased them to do it ; 
and they have, as I said before, done with our property 
and our persons just what they have pleased to do. 

Now it will naturally be matter of wonder to you, 
friend Jack, that this small band of persons, and of 
debauched wretched persons too, any half dozen of 
whom you would be able to beat with one hand tied 
down ; it will be matter of wonder to you that this 
contemptible band should have been able thus to sub- 
jugate, and hold in bondage so degrading, the whole 



Letter to Jack Harrow 229 

of the English people. But, Jack, recollect that once 
a parcel of fat, lazy, drinking, and guttling monks and 
friars were able to make this same people to work 
and support them in their laziness and debaucheries, 
aye, and almost to adore them, too ; to go to them, 
and kneel down and confess their sins to them, and to 
believe that it was in their power to absolve them of 
their sins. Now how was it that these fat, these 
bastard-propagating rascals succeeded in making the 
people do this ? Why by fraud ; by deception ; by 
cheatery ; by making them believe lies ; by frightening 
them half out of their wits ; by making them believe 
that they would go to hell if they did not work for them. 
A ten-thousandth part of the people were able to 
knock the greasy vagabonds on the head ; and they 
would have done it too ; but they were afraid of 
going to hell if they had no priest to pardon them. 

Thus did these miscreants govern by fraud. The 
Boroughmongers, as I shall by and by show, have of 
late been compelled to resort to open force ; but for 
a long while they governed by fraud alone. First they, 
by the artful and able agents which they have constantly 
kept in pay, frightened the people with the pretended 
dangers of a return of the old king's family. The 
people were amused with this scarecrow, while the 
chains were silently forging to bind them with. But 
the great fraud, the cheat of all cheats, was what they 
call the national debt. And now, Jack, pray attend to 



230 Political Pamphlets 

me ; for I am going to explain the chief cause of all 
the disgraces and sufferings of the labourers in Eng- 
land; and am also going to explain the reasons or 
motives which the Boroughmongers have for setting 
on foot this new fraud of Savings Banks. I beg you, 
Jack, if you have no other leisure time, to stay at 
home instead of going to church, for one single Sun- 
day. Shave yourself, put on a clean shirt, and sit 
down and read this letter ten times over, until you 
understand every word of it. And if you do that, 
you will laugh at the parson and tax-gatherer's coaxings 
about Savings Banks. You will keep your odd pennies 
to yourself; or lay them out in bread or bacon. 

You have heard, I daresay, a great deal about the 
national debt ; and now I will tell you what this thing 
is, and how it came, and then you will see what an 
imposture it is, and how shamefully the people of 
England have been duped and robbed. 

The Boroughmongers having usurped all the powers 
of government, and having begun to pocket the public 
money at a great rate, the people grew discontented. 
They began to think that they had done wrong in 
driving King James away. In a pretty little fable-book, 
there is a fable which says that the frogs, who had a 
log of wood for king, prayed to Jupiter to send them 
something more active. He sent them a stork, or 
heron, which gobbled them up alive by scores ! The 
people of England found in the Boroughmongers 



Letter to Jack Harrow 2.31 

what the poor frogs found in the stork; and they 
began to cry out against them and to wish for the old 
king back again. 

The Boroughmongers saw their danger, and they 
adopted measures to prevent it. They saw that if 
they could make it the interest of a great many rich 
people to uphold them and their system they should 
be able to get along. They therefore passed a law 
to enable themselves to borrow money of rich people ; 
and by the same law they imposed it on the people 
at large to pay, for ever, the interest of the money 
so by them borrowed. 

The money which they thus borrowed they spent 
in wars, or divided amongst themselves, in one shape 
or another. Indeed the money spent in wars was 
pocketed, for the greater part, by themselves. Thus 
they owed, in time, immense sums of money ; and as 
they continued to pass laws to compel the nation at 
large to pay the interest of what they borrowed, spent 
and pocketed, they called and still call this debt, the 
debt of the nation ; or, in the usual words, the 
national debt. 

It is curious to observe that there has seldom been 
known in the world any very wicked and mischievous 
scheme of which a priest of some description or other 
was not at the bottom. This scheme, certainly as 
wicked in itself as any that was ever known, and far 
more mischievous in its consequences than any other, 



232 Political Pamphlets 

was the offspring of a Bishop of Salisbury, whose 
name was Burnet ; a name that we ought to teach 
our very children to execrate. This crafty priest was 
made a Bishop for his invention of this scheme ; a fit 
reward for such a service. 

The Boroughmongers began this debt one hundred 
and twenty-four years ago. They have gone on bor- 
rowing ever since; and have never paid off one 
farthing, and never can. They have continued to 
pass Acts to make the people pay the interest of what 
has been borrowed ; till, at last, the debt itself amounts 
to more than all the lands, all the houses, all the 
trees, all the canals and all the mines would sell for 
at their full sterling value ; and the money to pay the 
interest is taken out of men's rents and out of their 
earnings ; and you, Jack, as I shall by and by prove 
to you, pay to the Boroughmongers more than the 
half of what you receive in weekly wages from your 
master. 

Is not this a pretty state of things ? Pray observe, 
Jack, the debt far exceeds the real full value of the 
whole kingdom, if there could be a purchaser found 
for it. So that, you see, as to private property no man 
has any, as long as this debt hangs upon the country. 
Your master, Farmer Gripe, for instance, calls his farm 
his. It is none of his, according to the Boroughmongers' 
law; for that law has pawned it for the payment of the 
interest of the Boroughmongers' debt ; and the pawn 



Letter to Jack Harrow 233 

must remain as long as the Boroughmongers' law re- 
mains. Gripe is compelled to pay out of the yearly value 
of his farm a certain portion to the debt. He may, 
indeed, sell the farm ; but he can get only a part of the 
value ; because the purchaser will have to pay a yearly 
sum on account of the pawn. In short, the Borough- 
mongers have, in fact, passed laws to take every man's 
private property away from him, in whatever portions 
their debt may demand such taking away ; and a man 
who thinks himself an owner of land, is at best only 
a steward who manages it for the Boroughmongers. 

This, however, is only a small part of the evil ; for 
the whole of the rents of the houses and lands and 
mines and canals would not pay the interest of this 
debt ; no, and not much more than the half of it. The 
labour is therefore pawned too. Every man's labour 
is pawned for the payment of the interest of this 
debt. Aye, Jack, you may think that you are working 
for yourself, and that, when on a Saturday night you 
take nine shillings from Farmer Gripe, the shillings 
are for your own use. You are grievously deceived, for 
more than half the sum is paid to the Boroughmongers 
on account of the pawn. You do not see this, but the 
fact is so. Come, what are the things in which you ex- 
pend the nine shillings ? Tea, sugar, tobacco, candles, 
salt, soap, shoes, beer, bread ; for no meat do you ever 
taste. On the articles taken together, except bread, 
you pay far more than half tax; and you will 



234 Political Pamphlets 

observe that your master's taxes are, in part, pinched 
out of you. There is an army employed in Ireland 
to go with the excisemen and other taxers to make 
the people pay. If the taxers were to wait at the ale 
houses and grocers' shops, and receive their portion from 
your own hands, you would then clearly see that the 
Boroughmongers take away more than the half of what 
you earn. You would then clearly see what it is that 
makes you poor and ragged, and that makes your 
children cry for the want of a bellyful. You would 
clearly see that what the hypocrites tell you about this 
being your lot, and about Providence placing you in 
such a state in order to try your patience and faith, is 
all a base falsehood. Why does not Providence place 
the Boroughmongers and the parsons in a state to try 
their patience and faith ? Is Providence less anxious 
to save them than to save you ? If you could see 
clearly what you pay on account of the Borough- 
mongers' pawn, you would see that your misery arises 
from the designs of a benevolent Providence being 
counteracted by the measures of the Borough-tyrants. 
Your lot, indeed ! Your lot assigned by Providence ! 
This is real blasphemy ! Just as if Providence, which 
sends the salt on shore all round our coast, had or- 
dained that you should not have any of it unless you 
would pay the Boroughmongers fifteen shillings a 
bushel tax upon it ! But what a Providence must that 
be which would ordain that an Englishman should pay 



Letter to Jack Harrow 235 

fifteen shillings tax on a bushel of English salt, while a 
Long Islander pays only two shillings and sixpence for 
a bushel of the same salt, after it is brought to 
America from England ? What an idea must we have 
of such a Providence as this? Oh no, Jack; this is 
not the work of Providence. It is the work of the 
Boroughmongers ; the pretext about Providence has 
been invented to deceive and cheat you, and to per- 
petuate your slavery. 

Well : all is pawned then. The land, the houses, 
the canals, the mines, and the labour are pawned for 
the payment of the interest of the Boroughmongers 
debt. Your labour, mind, Jack, is pawned for the one- 
half of its worth. But you will naturally ask, how is 
it that the nation, that everybody submits to this? 
There's your mistake, Jack. It is not everybody that 
submits. In the first place there are the Borough- 
mongers themselves and all their long tribe of rela- 
tions, legitimate and spurious, who profit from the 
taxes, and who have the church livings, which they 
enjoy without giving the poor any part of their legal 
share of those livings. Then there are all the officers 
of army and navy, and all the endless hosts of 
place-men and place-women, pensioned men and pen- 
sioned women, and all the hosts of tax-gatherers, who 
alone, these last I mean, swallow more than would be 
necessary to carry on the Government under a reformed 
Parliament. But have you forgotten the lenders of 



236 Political Pamphlets 

the money which makes the debt ? These people live 
wholly upon the interest of the debt ; and of course 
they approve of your labour, and the labour of every 
man being pawned. The Boroughmongers have 
pawned your labour to them. Therefore they like 
that your labour should be taxed. They cannot be 
said to submit to the tyranny; they applaud it, and to 
their utmost they support it. 

But you will say, still the mass of the people would, 
if they had a mind to bestir themselves, be too strong 
for all these. Very true. But you forget the army, 
Jack. This is a great military force, armed with 
bayonets, bullets and cannon-balls, ready at all times 
and in all places to march or gallop to attack the 
people, if they attempt to eat sugar or salt without 
paying the tax. There are forts, under the name of 
barracks, all over the kingdom, where armed men are 
kept in readiness for this purpose. In Ireland they 
actually go in person to help to collect the taxes ; 
and in England they are always ready to do the same 
Now, suppose, Jack, that a man who has a bit of land 
by the seaside, were to take up a little of the salt that 
Providence sends on shore He would be prosecuted. 
He would resist the process. Soldiers would come and 
take him away to be tried and hanged. Suppose you, 
Jack, were to dip your rushes into grease, till they came 
to farthing candles. The Excise would prosecute you. 
The sheriff would send men to drag you to jail. You 



Letter to Jack Harrow 237 

would fight in defence of your house and home. You 
would beat off the sheriff's men. Soldiers would 
come and kill you, or would take you away to be 
hanged. 

This is the thing by which the Boroughmongers 
govern. There are enough who would gladly not 
submit to their tyranny; but there is nobody but 
themselves who has an army at command. 

Nevertheless they are not altogether easy under 
these circumstances. An army is a two-edged weapon. 
It may cut the employer as well as the thing that it 
is employed upon. It is made up of flesh and blood, 
and of English flesh and blood too. It may not always 
be willing to move, or to strike when moved. The 
Boroughmongers see that their titles and estates hang 
upon the army. They would fain coax the people 
back again to feelings of reverence and love. They 
would fain wheedle them into something that shall 
blunt their hostility. They have been trying Bible- 
schemes, school-schemes, and soup-schemes. And 
at last they are trying the Savings Banks scheme, 
upon which I shall now more particularly address 
you. 

This thing is of the same nature, and its design is 
the same, as those of the grand scheme of Bishop 
Burnet. The people are discontented. They feel their 
oppressions ; they seek a change ; and some of them 
have decidedly protested against paying any longer any 



238 Political Pamphlets 

part of the interest of the debt, which they say ought 
to be paid, if at all, by those who have borrowed and 
spent, or pocketed, the money. Now then, in order to 
enlist great numbers of labourers and artisans on their 
side, the Boroughmongers have fallen upon the scheme 
of coaxing them to put small sums into what they 
call banks. These sums they pay large interest upon, 
and suffer the parties to take them out whenever they 
please. By this scheme they think to bind great 
numbers to them and their tyranny. They think that 
great numbers of labourers and artisans, seeing their 
little sums increase, as they will imagine, will begin to 
conceive the hopes of becoming rich by such means ; 
and as these persons are to be told that their money 
is in the funds, they will soon imbibe the spirit of 
fundholders, and will not care who suffers, or whether 
freedom or slavery prevail, so that the funds be but 
safe. 

Such is the scheme and such the motives. It will 
fail of its object, though not unworthy the inventive 
powers of the servile knaves of Edinburgh. It will 
fail, first because the men from whom alone the 
Borough -tyrants have anything to dread, will see 
through the scheme and despise it ; and will, be- 
sides, well know that the funds are a mere bubble 
that may burst, or be bursted at any moment. The 
parsons appear to be the main tools in this coaxing 
scheme. They are always at the head of everything 



Letter to Jack Harrow 239 

which they think likely to support tyranny. The de- 
positors will be domestic servants, particularly women, 
who will be tickled with the idea of having a fortune 
in the funds. The Boroughmongers will hint to their 
tenants that they must get their labourers into the 
Savings Banks. A preference will be given to such 
as deposit. The Ladies, the ' Parsons' Ladies,' will 
scold poor people into the funds. The parish officers 
will act their part in this compulsory process : and 
thus will the Boroughmongers get into their hands 
some millions of the people's money by a sort of 
' forced loan ' : or in other words, a robbery. In 
order to swell the thing out, the parsons and other 
tools of the Boroughmongers will lend money in this 
way themselves, under feigned names ; and we shall, 
if the system last a year or two, hear boastings of how 
rich the poor are become. 

Now then, Jack, supposing it possible that Farmer 
Gripe may, under pain of being turned out of your 
cottage, have made you put your twopence a week into 
one of these banks, let us see what is the natural con- 
sequence of your so doing. Twopence a week is eight 
shillings and eightpence a year; and the interest will 
make the amount about nine shillings perhaps. What 
use is this to you ? Will you let it remain \ and will 
you go on thus for years ? You must go on a great 
many years, indeed, before your deposit amounts to 
as much as the Boroughmongers take from you in one 



240 Political Pamphlets 

year ! Twopence will buy you a quarter of a pound of 
meat. This is a dinner for your wife or yourself. 
You never taste meat. And why are you to give up 
half a pound of your bread to the Boroughmongers. 
You are ill; your wife is ill; your children are ill. 
' Go to the bank and take out your money,' says the 
overseer ; ' for I'll give you no aid till that be spent' 
Thus then, you will have been robbing your own starved 
belly weekly, to no other end than that of favouring the 
parish purse, upon which you have a just and legal 
claim, until the clergy restore to the poor what they 
have taken from them. As the thing now stands, the 
poor are starved by others, this scheme is intended to 
make them assist in the work themselves, at the same 
time that it binds them to the tyranny. 

But, Jack, what a monstrous thing is this, that the 
Boroughmongers should kindly pass an Act to induce 
you to save your money, while they take from you five 
shillings out of every nine that you earn? Why not 
take less from you ! That would be the more natural 
way to go to work, surely. Why not leave you all 
your earnings to yourself? Oh, no ! They cannot do 
that. It is from the labour of men like you that the 
far greater part of the money comes to enrich the 
Boroughmongers, their relations and dependants. 

However, suppose you have gotten together five 
pounds in a Savings Bank. That is to say in the funds. 
This is a great deal for you, though it is not half so 



Letter to Jack Harrow 241 

much as you are compelled to give to the Borough- 
mongers in one year. This is a great sum. It is 
much more than you ever will have ; but suppose you 
have it. It is in the funds, mind. And now let me 
tell you what the funds are ; which is necessary if you 
have not read my little book called Paper against Gold. 
The funds is no place at all, Jack. It is nothing, Jack, 
It is moonshine. It is a lie, a bubble, a fraud, a cheat, 
a humbug. And it is all these in the most perfect 
degree. People think that the funds is a place where 
money is kept. They think that it is a place which 
contains that which they have deposited. But the fact 
is, that the funds is a word which means nothing that 
the most of the people think it means. It means the 
descriptions of the several sorts of the debt. Suppose I 
owed money to a tailor, to a smith, to a shoemaker, 
to a carpenter, and that I had their several bills in my 
house. I should in the language of the Borough- 
mongers, call these bills my funds. The Borough- 
mongers owe some people annuities at three pounds 
for a hundred ; some at four pounds for a hundred ; 
some at five pounds for a hundred; and these 
annuities, or debts they call their funds. And, Jack, 
if the Savings Bank people lend them a good parcel 
of money, they will have that money in these debts 
or funds. They will be owners of some of those 
debts which never will and never can be paid. 

But what is this money too in which you are to be 

R 



242 Political Pamphlets 

paid back again ? It is no money. It is paper ; and 
though that paper will pass just at this time ; it will 
not long pass, I can assure you, Jack. When you 
have worked a fortnight, and get a pound note for it, 
you set a high value upon the note, because it brings 
you food. But suppose nobody would take the note 
from you. Suppose no one would give you anything 
in exchange for it. You would go back to Farmer 
Gripe and fling the note in his face. You would 
insist upon real money, and you would get it, or you 
would tear down his house. This is what will 
happen, Jack, in a very short time. 

I will explain to you, Jack, how this matter stands. 
Formerly bank-notes were as good as real money, 
because anybody that had one might go at any 
moment, and get real money for it at the Bank. But 
now the thing is quite changed. The Bank broke 
some years ago ; that is to say, it could not pay its 
notes in real money ; and it never has been able to 
do it from that time to this ; and what is more, it 
never can do it again. To be sure the paper passes 
at present. You take it for your work, and others 
take it of you for bread and tea. But the time may 
be, and I believe is, very near at hand, when this 
paper will not pass at all ; and then as the Borough- 
mongers and the Savings Bank people have, and 
can have, no real money, how are you to get your 
five pounds back again ? 



Letter to Jack Harrow 243 

The bank-notes may be all put down at any 
moment, if any man of talent and resolution choose to 
put them down ; and why may not such a man exist, 
and have the Disposition to put them down? They are 
now of value, as I said before, because they will pass ; 
because people will take them and will give victuals 
and drink for them ; but, if nobody would give bread 
and tea and beer for them, would they then be good 
for anything? They are taken because people are 
pretty sure that they can pass them again ; but who 
will take them when he does not think that he can 
pass them again ? And I assure you, Jack, that even 
I myself could, before next May-day, do that which 
would prevent any man in England from ever taking 
a bank-note any more. If you should put five 
pounds into a Savings Bank, therefore, you could, 
in such case, never see a farthing in exchange 
for it. 

This being a matter of so much importance to you, 
I will clearly explain to you how I might easily do the 
thing. Mind, I do not say that I will do the thing. 
Indeed, I will not ; and I do not know any one that 
intends to do it. But I will show you how I might 
do it ; because it is right that you should know what 
a ticklish state your poor five pounds will be in if 
you deposit them in the Savings Bank. 

You know, Jack, that forged notes pass till people 
find them out. They keep passing very quietly till they 



244 Political Pamphlets 

come to the Bank, and there being known for forged 
notes, the man who carries them to the Bank, or 
owns them at the time, loses the amount of them. 
Suppose now, that Tom were to forge a note, and pay it 
to Dick for a pig. Dick would pay it to Bob for some 
tea. Bob would send it up to London to pay his tea- 
man. The tea-man would send it to the Bank. |The 
Bank would keep it, and give him nothing for it. If 
the tea-man forgot whom he got it from, he must 
lose. If he could prove that he got it from 
Bob, Bob must lose it ; and so on ; but either 
Dick or Bob or the tea-man must lose it. There 
must be a loss somewhere. 

Now, it is clear that if there were a great quantity 
of forged notes in circulation, people would be afraid to 
take notes at all ; and that if this great quantity came 
out all of a sudden, it would for a while put an end to 
all payments and all trade. And if such great quantity 
can with safety be put out, I leave you to guess, 
Jack, at the situation of your five pounds. I will 
now show you, then, that I could do this myself, and 
with perfect safety and ease. 

I could have made, at a very trifling expense, a 
million of pounds in bank-notes of various amounts. 
There are fourteen different ways in which I could 
send them to England, and lodge them safely there, 
without the smallest chance of their arrival being 
known to any soul except the man to whom they 



Letter to Jack Harrow 245 

should be confided. The Banks might search and 
ransack every vessel that arrived from America. They 
might do what they would. They would never detect 
the cargo ! 

There they are then, safe in London; a famous 
stock of bank-notes, so well executed that no human 
being except the Bank people would be able to discover 
the counterfeit. The agent takes a parcel at a time, 
and drops them in the street in the dark. This work 
he carries on for a week or two in such streets as are 
best calculated for the purpose, till he has well stocked 
the town. He may do the same at Portsmouth and 
other great towns if he please, and he may send off 
large supplies by post. 

Now, Jack, suppose you were up at London with 
your master's waggon. You might find a parcel of 
notes. You would go to the first shop to buy your 
wife a gown and your children some clothes, yourself 
a hat, a greatcoat, and some shoes. The rest you 
would lay out at shops on the road home ; for the 
sooner you got rid of this foundal, the less chance of 
having it taken from you. The shopkeepers would 
thank you for your custom, and your wife's heart 
would bound with joy. 

The notes would travel about most merrily. At last 
they would come to the Bank. The holders would lose 
them ; but you would gain by them. So that, upon the 
whole, there would be no loss, and the maker of the 



246 Political Pamphlets 

notes would have no gain. Others would find, and 
nearly all would do like you. In a few days the notes 
would find their way to the Bank in great numbers, 
where they would all be stopped. The news would 
spread abroad. The thieftakers would be busy. 
Every man who had had his note stopped at the 
Bank would alarm his neighbourhood. The country 
would ring with the news. Nobody would take a 
bank-note. All business would be at a stand. The 
farmers would sell no corn for bank-notes. The 
millers would have nothing else to pay with. No 
markets, because no money. The baker would be 
able to get no flour. He could sell no bread, for 
nobody would have money to pay him. 

Jack, this thing will assuredly take place. Mind, 
I tell you so. I have been right in my predictions on 
former occasions ; and I am not wrong now. I beg 
you to believe me ; or, at any rate, to blame yourself 
if you lose by such an event. In the midst of this 
hubbub what will you do ? Farmer Gripe will, I 
daresay, give you something to eat for your labour. 
But what will become of your five pounds ? That 
sum you have in the Savings Bank, and as you are 
to have it out at any time when you please, your wife 
sets off to draw it. The banker gives her a five- 
pound note. She brings it \ but nobody will take it 
of you for a pig, for bread, for clothing, or for any- 
thing else ! And this, Jack, will be the fate of all 



Letter to Jack Harrow 247 

those who shall be weak enough to put their money 
into those banks ! 

I beg you, Jack, not to rely on the power of the 
Boroughmongers in this case. Anything that is to 
be done with halters, gags, dungeons, bayonets, 
powder, or ball, they can do a great deal at; but 
they are not conjurers ; they are not wizards. They 
cannot prevent a man from dropping bank-notes in 
the dark; and they cannot make people believe in 
the goodness of that which they must know to be bad. 
If they could hold a sword to every man's breast, 
they might indeed do something ; but short of this, 
nothing that they can do would be of any avail. How- 
ever, the truth is that they, in such case, will have 
no sword at all. An army is a powerful weapon ; 
but an army must be paid. Soldiers have been called 
machines ; but they are eating and drinking machines. 
With good food and drink they will go far and do 
much ; but without them, they will not stir an inch. 
And in such a case whence is to come the money 
to pay them? In short, Jack, the Boroughmongers 
would drop down dead, like men in an apoplexy, and 
you would, as soon as things got to rights, have your 
bread and beer and meat and everything in abundance. 

The Boroughmongers possess no means of pre- 
venting the complete success of the dropping plan. 
If they do, they ought to thank me for giving them a 
warning of their danger ; and for telling them that if 



248 Political Pamphlets 

they do prevent the success of such a plan, they are 
the cleverest fellows in this world. 

I now, Jack, take my leave of you, hoping that 
you will not be coaxed out of your money, and 
assuring you that I am your friend, 

Wm. Cobbett. 



VII.— 'THE LETTERS OF MALACHI 
MALAGROWTHER '. 

By Sir Walter Scott 

(To what has been said in the Introduction respect- 
ing the Letters of Malachi Malagrowther it is only 
necessary to add that their immediate cause was a Bill 
due to the very commercial crisis which indirectly ruined 
Scott himself, and introduced in the spring of 182 6 for 
stopping the note circulation of private banks altogether, 
while limiting that of the Bank of England to notes of 
£$ and upwards. The scheme, which was to extend 
to the whole of Great Britain, was from the first 
unpopular in Scotland, and Scott plunged into the 
fray. The letters excited or coincided with such violent 
opposition throughout the country that the Bill was 
limited to England only. As Scott was a strong 
Tory, his friends in the Government, especially Lord 
Melville and Croker (who was officially employed to 
answer ' MalachV\ were rather sore at his action. 



250 Political Pamphlets 

He defended himself in some spirited private letters, 
which will be found in Lockhart.} 



A Letter on the Proposed Change of 
Currency 

To the Editor of the Edinburgh Weekly Journal 

My dear Mr. Journalist — I am by pedigree a 
discontented person, so that you may throw this letter 
into the fire, if you have any apprehensions of in- 
curring the displeasure of your superiors. I am, in 
fact, the lineal descendant of Sir Mungo Malagrowther, 
who makes a figure in the Fortunes of Nigel, and have 
retained a reasonable proportion of his ill-luck, and, 
in consequence, of his ill-temper. If, therefore, I 
should chance to appear too warm and poignant in 
my observations, you must impute it to the hasty and 
peevish humour which I derive from my ancestor. 
But, at the same time, it often happens that this dis- 
position leads me to speak useful, though unpleasant 
truths, when more prudent men hold their tongues 
and eat their pudding. A lizard is an ugly and dis- 
gusting thing enough ; but, methinks, if a lizard were 
to run over my face and awaken me, which is said to 
be their custom when they observe a snake approach a 
sleeping person, I should neither scorn his intimation, 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 251 

nor feel justifiable in crushing him to death, merely 
because he is a filthy little abridgment of a crocodile. 
Therefore, 'for my love, I pray you, wrong me 
not.' 

I am old, sir, poor, and peevish, and therefore I 
may be wrong ; but when I look back on the last 
fifteen or twenty years, and more especially on the 
last ten, I think I see my native country of Scotland, 
if it is yet to be called by a title so discriminative, 
falling, so far as its national, or rather, perhaps, I 
ought now to say its provincial, interests are con- 
cerned, daily into more absolute contempt. Our 
ancestors were a people of some consideration in the 
councils of the empire. So late as my own younger 
days, an English minister would have paused, even 
in a favourite measure, if a reclamation of national 
rights had been made by a member for Scotland, 
supported as it uniformly then was, by the voice of 
her representatives and her people. Such ameliora- 
tions in our peculiar system as were thought necessary, 
in order that North Britain might keep pace with her 
sister in the advance of improvement, were suggested 
by our own countrymen, persons well acquainted 
with our peculiar system of laws (as different from 
those of England as from those of France), and who 
knew exactly how to adapt the desired alteration to 
the principle of our legislative enactments, so that the 
whole machine might, as mechanics say, work well 



252 Political Pamphlets 

and easily. For a long time this wholesome check 
upon innovation, which requires the assimilation of a 
proposed improvement with the general constitution of 
the country to which it has been recommended, and 
which ensures that important point, by stipulating that 
the measure shall originate with those to whom the 
spirit of the constitution is familiar, has been, so far as 
Scotland is concerned, considerably disused. Those 
who have stepped forward to repair the gradual 
failure of our constitutional system of law, have been 
persons that, howsoever qualified in other respects, 
have had little further knowledge of its construction 
than could be acquired by a hasty and partial survey, 
taken just before they commenced their labours. Scot- 
land and her laws have been too often subjected to 
the alterations of any person who chose to found him- 
self a reputation, by bringing in a bill to cure some 
defect which had never been felt in practice, but 
which was represented as a frightful bugbear to 
English statesmen, who, wisely and judiciously tena- 
cious of the legal practice and principles received at 
home, are proportionally startled at the idea of any- 
thing abroad which cannot be brought to assimilate 
with them. 

The English seem to have made a compromise 
with the active tendency to innovation, which is * one 
great characteristic of the day. Wise and sagacious 
themselves, they are nervously jealous of innovations 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 253 

in their own laws — Nolumus leges Angliae mutari, is 
written on the skirts of their judicial robes, as the 
most sacred texts of Scripture were inscribed on the 
phylacteries of the Rabbis. The belief that the 
Common Law of England constitutes the perfection 
of human reason, is a maxim bound upon their fore- 
heads. Law Monks they have been called in other 
respects, and like monks they are devoted to their 
own Rule, and admit no question of its infallibility. 
There can be no doubt that their love of a system, 
which, if not perfect, has so much in it that is 
excellent, originates in the most praiseworthy feel- 
ings. Call it if you will the prejudice of education, 
it is still a prejudice honourable in itself, and useful 
to the public. I only find fault with it, because, 
like the Friars in the Duenna monopolising the 
bottle, these English monks will not tolerate in their 
lay brethren of the north the slightest pretence to a 
similar feeling. 

In: England, therefore, no innovation can be pro- 
posed affecting the administration of justice, without 
being subjected to the strict enquiry of the Guardians 
of the Law, and afterwards resisted pertinaciously, 
until time and the most mature and reiterated discus- 
sion shall have proved its utility, nay, its necessity. 
The old saying is still true in all its points — Touch 
but a cobweb in Westminster Hall, and the old spider 
will come out in defence of it. This caution may 



254 Political Pamphlets 

sometimes postpone the adoption of useful amend- 
ments, but it operates to prevent all hasty and experi- 
mental innovations; and it is surely better that existing 
evils should be endured for some time longer, than 
that violent remedies should be hastily adopted, the 
unforeseen and unprovided for consequences of which 
are often so much more extensive than those which 
had been foreseen and reckoned upon. An ordinary 
mason can calculate upon the exact gap which will 
be made by the removal of a corner stone in an 
old building ; but what architect, not intimately 
acquainted with the whole edifice, can presume 
even to guess how much of the structure is, or is 
not, to follow? 

The English policy in this respect is a wise one, 
and we have only to wish they would not insist in 
keeping it all to themselves. But those who are most 
devoted to their own religion have least sympathy for 
the feelings of dissenters ; and a spirit of proselytism 
has of late shown itself in England for extending the 
benefits of their system, in all its strength and weak- 
ness, to a country which has been hitherto flourishing 
and contented under its own. They adopted the con- 
clusion that all English enactments are right ; but the 
system of municipal law in Scotland is not English, 
therefore it is wrong. Under sanction of this syllogism, 
our rulers have indulged and encouraged a spirit of 
experiment and innovation at our expense, which they 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 255 

resist obstinately when it is to be carried through at 
their own risk. 

For more than half of last century, this was a 
practice not to be thought of. Scotland was during 
that period disaffected, in bad humour, armed too, and 
smarting under various irritating recollections. This 
is not the sort of patient for whom an experimental 
legislator chooses to prescribe. There was little 
chance of making Saunders take the patent pill by 
persuasion — main force was a dangerous argument, 
and some thought claymores had edges. 

This period passed away, a happier one arrived, 
and Scotland, no longer the object of terror, or at 
least great uneasiness, to the British Government, 
was left from the year 1750 under the guardianship 
of her own institutions, to win her silent way to 
national wealth and consequence. Contempt prob- 
ably procured for her the freedom from interference, 
which had formerly been granted out of fear ; for the 
medical faculty are as slack in attending the garrets 
of paupers as the caverns of robbers. But neglected 
as she was, and perhaps because she was neglected, 
Scotland, reckoning her progress during the space 
from the close of the American War to the present 
day, has increased her prosperity in a ratio more than 
five times greater than that of her more fortunate 
and richer sister. She is now worth the attention 
of the learned faculty, and God knows she has had 



256 Political Pamphlets 

plenty of it. She has been bled and purged, spring 
and fall, and talked into courses of physic, for which 
she had little occasion. She has been of late a sort of 
experimental farm, upon which every political student 
has been permitted to try his theory — a kind of 
common property, where every juvenile statesman 
has been encouraged to make his inroads, as in Moray 
land, where, anciently, according to the idea of the 
old Highlanders, all men had a right to take their 
prey — a subject in a common dissecting room, left 
to the scalpel of the junior students, with the degrad- 
ing inscription, — fiat experimentum in corpore mli. 

I do not mean to dispute, Sir, that much alteration 
was necessary in our laws, and that much benefit has 
followed many of the great changes [which have taken 
place. I do not mean to deprecate a gradual approach 
to the English system, especially in commercial law. 
The Jury Court, for example, was a fair experiment, 
in my opinion, cautiously introduced as such, and 
placed under such regulations as might best assimilate 
its forms with those of the existing Supreme Court. 
I beg, therefore, to be considered as not speaking of 
the alterations themselves, but of the apparent hos- 
tility towards our municipal institutions, as repeatedly 
manifested in the course of late proceedings, tending 
to force and wrench them into a similarity with those 
of England. 

The opinions of our own lawyers, nay, of our 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 257 

Judges, than whom wiser and more honourable men 
never held that character, have been, if report speaks 
true, something too much neglected and controlled 
in the course of these important changes, in which, 
methinks, they ought to have had a leading and primary 
voice. They have been almost avowedly regarded not 
as persons the best qualified to judge of proposed in- 
novations, but as prejudiced men, determined to oppose 
them, right or wrong. The last public Commission 
was framed on the very principle, that if Scotch 
lawyers were needs to be employed, a sufficient num- 
ber of these should consist of gentlemen, who, what- 
ever their talents and respectability might be in other 
respects, had been too long estranged from the study 
of Scottish law to retain any accurate recollection of 
an abstruse science, or any decided partiality for its 
technical forms. This was done avowedly for the 
purpose of evading the natural partiality of the 
Scottish Judges and practitioners to their own system ; 
that partiality which the English themselves hold so 
sacred a feeling in their own Judges and Counsel 
learned in the law. I am not, I repeat, complain- 
ing of the result of the Commissions, but of the 
spirit in which the alterations were undertaken. 
Unquestionably much was done in brushing up and 
improving the old machinery of Scottish Law Courts, 
and in making it move more rapidly, though scarce, 
I think, more correctly than before. Dispatch has 

s 



258 Political Pamphlets 

been much attended to. But it may be ultimately 
found that the timepiece which runs fastest does not 
intimate the hour most accurately. At all events, 
the changes have been made and established — there 
let them rest And had I, Malachi Malagrowther, the 
sole power to-morrow of doing so, I would not restore 
the old forms of judicial proceedings ; because I 
hold the constitution of Courts of Justice too serious 
matters to be put back or forward at pleasure, like a 
boy's first watch, merely for experiment's sake. 

What I do complain of is the general spirit of 
slight and dislike manifested to our national estab- 
lishments by those of the sister country who are so 
very zealous in defending their own ; and not less do 
I complain of their jealousy of the opinions of those 
who cannot but be much better acquainted than they, 
both with the merits and deficiencies of the system, 
which hasty and imperfectly informed judges have 
shown themselves so anxious to revolutionise. 

There is no explanation to be given of this but 
one — namely, the entire conviction and belief of our 
English brethren that the true Themis is worshipped 
in Westminster Hall, and that her adorers cannot be 
too zealous in her service ; while she, whose image an 
ingenious artist has depicted balancing herself upon 
a tee-totum on the southern window of the Parliament 
House of Edinburgh, is a mere idol, — a Diana of 
Ephesus, — whom her votaries worship, either because 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 259 

her shrine brings great gain to the craftsmen, or out 
of an ignorant and dotard superstition, which induces 
them to prefer the old Scottish Mumpsimus to the 
modern English Sumpsimus. Now, this is not fair 
construction in our friends, whose intentions in our 
behalf, we allow, are excellent, but who certainly are 
scarcely entitled to beg the question at issue without 
inquiry or discussion, or to treat us as the Spaniards 
treated the Indians, whom they massacred for wor- 
shipping the image of the Sun, while they themselves 
bowed down to that of the Virgin Mary. Even Queen 
Elizabeth was contented with the evasive answer of 
Melville, when hard pressed with the trying question, 
whether Queen Mary or she were the fairest. We are 
willing, in the spirit of that answer, to say that the 
Themis of Westminster Hall is the best fitted to pre- 
side over the administration of the larger, and more 
fertile country of beef and pudding ; while she of the 
tee-totum (placed in that precarious position, we pre- 
sume, to express her instability, since these new lights 
were struck out) claims a more limited but equally 
respectful homage, within her ancient jurisdiction — 
sua paupera regna — the Land of Cakes. If this 
compromise does not appease the ardour of our 
brethren for converting us to English forms and 
fashions, we must use the scriptural question, " Who 
hath required these things at your hands ? " 

The inquiries and result of another Commission 



260 Political Pamphlets 

are too much to the purpose to be suppressed. The 
object was to investigate the conduct of the Revenue 
Boards in Ireland and Scotland. In the former, it is 
well known, great mismanagement was discovered; for 
Pat, poor fellow, had been playing the loon to a con- 
siderable extent. In Scotland, not a shadow of abuse 
prevailed. You would have thought, Mr. Journalist, 
that the Irish Boards would have been reformed in 
some shape, and the Scotch Establishments honourably 
acquitted, and suffered to continue on the footing of 
independence which they had so long enjoyed, and 
of which they had proved themselves so worthy. Not 
so, sir. The Revenue Boards,, in both countries, under- 
went exactly the same regulation, were deprived of 
their independent consequence, and placed under 
the superintendence of English control ; the innocent 
and the guilty being treated in every respect alike. 
Now, on the side of Scotland, this was like Trinculo 
losing his bottle in the pool — there was not only dis- 
honour in the thing, but an infinite loss. 

I have heard two reasons suggested for this indis- 
criminating application of punishment to the innocent 
and to the culpable. 

In the first place, it was honestly confessed that 
Ireland would never have quietly submitted to the in- 
dignity offered to her, unless poor inoffensive Scotland 
had been included in the regulation. The Green Isle, 
it seems, was of the mind of a celebrated lady of quality, 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 261 

who, being about to have a decayed tooth drawn, 
refused to submit to the operation till she had seen 
the dentist extract a sound and serviceable grinder 
from the jaws of her waiting-woman — and her humour 
was to be gratified. The lady was a termagant dame 
— the wench a tame-spirited simpleton — the dentist an 
obliging operator — and the teeth of both were drawn 
accordingly. 

This gratification of his humours is gained by Pat's 
being up with the pike and shillelagh on any or no occa- 
sion. God forbid Scotland should retrograde towards 
such a state — much better that the Deil, as in Burns's 
song, danced away with the whole excisemen in the 
country. We do not want to hear her prate of her 
number of millions of men, and her old military ex- 
ploits. We had better remain in union with England, 
even at the risk of becoming a subordinate species 
of Northumberland, as far as national consequence 
is concerned, than remedy ourselves by even hinting 
the possibility of a rupture. But there is no harm in 
wishing Scotland to have just so much ill-nature, accord- 
ing to her own proverb, as may keep her good-nature 
from being abused ; so much national spirit as may 
determine her to stand by her own rights, conducting 
her assertion of them with every feeling of respect 
and amity toward England. 

The other reason alleged for this equal distribution 
of punishment^ as if it had been the influence of the 



262 Political Pamphlets 

common sun, or the general rain, to the just and the 
unjust, was one which is extremely predominant at 
present with our Ministers — the necessity of Uniformity 
in all such cases ; and the consideration what an awk- 
ward thing it would be to have a Board of Excise or 
Customs remaining independent in the one country, 
solely because they had, without impeachment, dis- 
charged their duty; while the same establishment was 
cashiered in another, for no better reason than that it 
had been misused. 

This reminds us of an incident, said to have befallen 
at the Castle of Glammis, when these venerable 
towers were inhabited by a certain old Earl of Strath- 
more, who was as great an admirer of uniformity as 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer could have desired. 
He and his gardener directed all in the garden and 
pleasure grounds upon the ancient principle of exact 
correspondence between the different parts, so that 
each alley had its brother; a principle which, re- 
nounced by gardeners, is now adopted by statesmen. 
It chanced once upon a time that a fellow was caught 
committing some petty theft, and, being taken in the 
manner, was sentenced by the Bailie Macwheeble of 
the jurisdiction to stand for a certain time in the 
baronial pillory, called the jougs, being a collar and 
chain, one of which contrivances was attached to each 
side of the portal of the great avenue which led to the 
castle. The thief was turned over accordingly to the 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 263 

gardener, as ground-officer, to see the punishment 
duly inflicted. When the Thane of Glammis returned 
from his morning ride, he was surprised to find both 
sides of the gateway accommodated each with a prisoner, 
like a pair of heraldic supporters, chained and collared 
proper. He asked the gardener, whom he found 
watching the place of punishment, as his duty required, 
whether another delinquent had been detected ? 
" No, my Lord," said the gardener, in the tone of a 
man excellently well satisfied with himself, — " but I 
thought the single fellow looked very awkward stand- 
ing on one side of the gateway, so I gave half a crown 
to one of the labourers to stand on the other side for 
uniformity's sake." This is exactly a case in point, 
and probably the only one which can be found — with 
this sole difference, that I do not hear that the mem- 
bers of the Scottish Revenue Board got any boon for 
standing in the pillory with those of Ireland — for uni- 
formity's sake. 

Lastly, sir, I come to this business of extending the 
provisions of the Bill prohibiting the issue of notes 
under five pounds to Scotland, in six months after the 
period that the regulation shall be adopted in England. 
I am not about to enter upon the question which 
so much agitates speculative writers upon the wealth of 
nations, or attempt to discuss what proportion of the 
precious metals ought to be detained within a country; 
what are the best means of keeping it there \ or to 



264 Political Pamphlets 

what extent the want of specie can be supplied by 
paper credit : I will not ask if a poor man can be 
made a rich one, by compelling him to buy a service 
of plate, instead of the delf ware which served his turn. 
These are questions I am not adequate to solve. But 
I beg leave to consider the question in a practical 
point of view, and to refer myself entirely to experience. 

I assume, without much hazard of contradiction, 
that Banks have existed in Scotland for near one hundred 
and twenty years — that they have flourished, and the 
country has flourished with them — and that during 
the last fifty years particularly, provincial Banks, or 
branches of the principal established and chartered 
Banks, have gradually extended themselves in almost 
every Lowland district in Scotland ; that the notes, 
and especially the small notes, which they distribute, 
entirely supply the demand for a medium of currency ; 
and that the system has so completely expelled gold 
from the country of Scotland, that you never by any 
chance espy a guinea there, unless in the purse of an 
accidental stranger, or in the coffers of these Banks 
themselves. This is granting the facts of the case as 
broadly as can be asked. 

It is not less unquestionable that the consequence of 
this Banking system, as conducted in Scotland, has been 
attended with the greatest advantage to the country. 
The facility which it has afTorded to the industrious and 
enterprising agriculturalist or manufacturer, as well as 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 265 

to the trustees of the public in executing national works, 
has converted Scotland from a poor, miserable, and 
barren country, into one, where, if nature has done less, 
art and industry have done more, than in perhaps 
any country in Europe, England herself not excepted. 
Through means of the credit which this system has 
afforded, roads have been made, bridges built, and 
canals dug, opening up to reciprocal communication 
the most sequestered districts of the country — manufac- 
tures have been established, unequalled in extent or 
success — wastes have been converted into productive 
farms — the productions of the earth for human use 
have been multiplied twentyfold, while the wealth of 
the rich and the comforts of the poor have been 
extended in the same proportion. And all this in a 
country where the rigour of the climate, and sterility 
of the soil, seem united to set improvement at defiance. 
Let those who remember Scotland forty years since, 
bear witness if I speak truth or falsehood. 

There is no doubt that this change has been 
produced by the facilities of procuring credit, which the 
Scottish Banks held forth, both by discounting bills, 
and by granting cash-accounts. Every undertaking 
of consequence, whether by the public or by in- 
dividuals, has been carried on by such means; at 
least exceptions are extremely rare. 

There is as little doubt that the Banks could not 
have furnished these necessary funds of cash, without 



266 Political Pamphlets 

enjoying the reciprocal advantage of their own notes 
being circulated in consequence, and by means of 
the accommodation thus afforded. It is not to be 
expected that every undertaking which the system 
enabled speculators or adventurers to commence, 
should be well-judged, attentively carried on, or 
successful in issue. Imprudence in some cases, mis- 
fortune in others, have had their usual quantity of 
victims. But in Scotland, as elsewhere, it has happened 
in many instances that improvements, which turned 
out ruinous to those who undertook them, have, not- 
withstanding, themselves ultimately produced the most 
beneficial advantages to the country, which derived 
in such instances an addition to its general prosper- 
ity, even from the undertakings which had proved 
destructive to the private fortune of the projectors. 

Not only did the Banks dispersed throughout 
Scotland afford the means of bringing the country 
to an unexpected and almost marvellous degree of 
prosperity, but in no considerable instance, save one, 
have their own over-speculating undertakings been 
the means of interrupting that prosperity. The 
solitary exception was the undertaking called the Ayr 
Bank, rashly entered into by a large body of country 
gentlemen and others, unacquainted with commercial 
affairs, and who had moreover the misfortune not only 
to set out on false principles, but to get false rogues 
for their principal agents and managers. The fall 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 267 

of this Bank brought much calamity on the country ; 
but two things are remarkable in its history : First, 
that under its too prodigal, yet beneficial influence, 
a fine county (that of Ayr) was converted from a 
desert into a fertile land. Secondly, that, though at 
a distant interval, the Ayr Bank paid all its engage- 
ments, and the loss only fell on the original stock- 
holders. The warning was, however, a terrible one, and 
has been so well attended to in Scotland, that very few 
attempts seem to have been afterwards made to estab- 
lish Banks prematurely — that is, where the particular 
district was not in such an advanced state as to re- 
quire the support of additional credit; for in every such 
case, it was judiciously foreseen, the forcing a capital 
on the district could only lead to wild speculation, 
instead of supporting solid and promising undertakings. 
The character and condition of the persons pursu- 
ing the profession ought to be noticed, however slightly. 
The Bankers of Scotland have been, generally speak- 
ing, good men, in the mercantile phrase, showing, by 
the wealth of which they have died possessed, that 
their credit was sound ; and good men also, many of 
them eminently so, in the more extensive and better 
sense of the word, manifesting, by the excellence of 
their character, the fairness of the means by which their 
riches were acquired. There may have been, among 
so numerous a body, men of a different character, 
fishers in troubled waters, capitalists who sought gain 



268 Political Pamphlets 

not by the encouragement of fair trade and honest 
industry, but by affording temporary fuel to rashness 
or avarice. But the number of upright traders in 
the profession has narrowed the means of mischief 
which such Christian Shylocks would otherwise have 
possessed. There was loss, there was discredit, in 
having recourse to such characters, when honest wants 
could be fairly supplied by upright men, and on liberal 
terms. Such reptiles have been confined in Scotland 
to batten upon their proper prey of folly, and feast, 
like worms, on the corruption in which they are bred. 
Since the period of the Ayr Bank, now near half 
a century, I recollect very few instances of Banking 
Companies issuing notes which have become insol- 
vent. One, about thirty years since, was the Merchant 
Bank of Stirling, which never was in high credit, 
having been known almost at the time of its com- 
mencement by the odious nickname of Black in the 
West. Another was within these ten years, the East 
Lothian Banking Company, whose affairs had been 
very ill conducted by a villainous manager. In both 
cases, the notes were paid up in full. In the latter 
case, they were taken up by one of the most respect- 
able houses in Edinburgh; so that all current en- 
gagements were paid without the least check to the 
circulation of their notes, or inconvenience to poor 
or rich, who happened to have them in possession. 
The Union Bank of Falkirk also became insolvent 



The Letters of Malachi M alagroivther 269 

within these fifteen years, but paid up its engagements 
without much loss to the creditors. Other cases there 
may have occurred, not coming within my recollection ; 
but I think none which made any great sensation, or 
could at all affect the general confidence of the 
country in the stability of the system. None of 
these bankruptcies excited much attention, or, as we 
have seen, caused any considerable loss. 

In the present unhappy commercial distress, I 
have always heard and understood that the Scottish 
Banks have done all in their power to alleviate the 
evils which came thickening on the country ; and far 
from acting illiberally, that they have come forward 
to support the tottering credit of the commercial 
world with a frankness which augured the most per- 
fect confidence in their own resources. We have 
heard of only one provincial Bank being even for 
a moment in the predicament of suspicion; and of 
that copartnery the funds and credit were so well 
understood, that their correspondents in Edinburgh, 
as in the case of the East Lothian Bank formerly 
mentioned, at once guaranteed the payment of their 
notes, and saved the public even from momentary 
agitation, and individuals from the possibility of dis- 
tress. I ask what must be the stability of a system 
of credit of which such an universal earthquake 
could not displace or shake even the slightest indi- 
vidual portion ? 



270 Political Pamphlets 

Thus stands the case in Scotland ; and it is clear 
any restrictive enactment affecting the Banking sys- 
tem, or their mode of issuing notes, must be adopted 
in consequence of evils, operating elsewhere perhaps, 
but certainly unknown in this country. 

In England, unfortunately, things have been very 
different, and the insolvency of many provincial 
Banking Companies, of the most established reputa- 
tion for stability, has greatly distressed the country, 
and alarmed London itself, from the necessary reaction 
of their misfortunes upon their correspondents in the 
capital. 

I do not think, sir, that the advocate of Scotland is 
called upon to go further, in order to plead an exemp- 
tion from any experiment which England may think 
proper to try to cure her own malady, than to say 
such malady does not exist in her jurisdiction. It is 
surely enough to plead, ' We are well, our pulse and 
complexion prove it — let those who are sick take 
physic' But the opinion of the English Ministers is 
widely different; for, granting our premisses, they deny 
our conclusion. 

The peculiar humour of a friend, whom I lost 
some years ago, is the only one I recollect, which jumps 
precisely with the reasoning of the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer. My friend was an old Scottish laird, a 
bachelor and a humorist — wealthy, convivial, and 
hospitable, and of course having always plenty of 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 271 

company about him. He had a regular custom of 
swallowing every night in the world one of Dr. 
Anderson's pills, for which reasons may be readily 
imagined. But it is not so easy to account for his 
insisting on every one of his guests taking the same 
medicine, and whether it was by way of patronising the 
medicine, which is in some sense a national receipt, 
or whether the mischievous old wag amused himself 
with anticipating the scenes of delicate embarrassment, 
which the dispensation sometimes produced in the 
course of the night, I really cannot even guess. What 
is equally strange, he pressed the request with a sort of 
eloquence which succeeded with every guest. No man 
escaped, though there were few who did not make re- 
sistance. His powers of persuasion would have been 
invaluable to a minister of state. ' What ! not one 
Leetle Anderson, to oblige your friend, your host, your 
entertainer ! He had taken one himself — he would 
take another, if you pleased — surely what was good 
for his complaint must of course be beneficial to yours?' 
It was in vain you pleaded your being perfectly well, — 
your detesting the medicine, — your being certain it 
would not agree with you — none of the apologies were 
received as valid. You might be warm, pathetic or 
sulky, fretful or patient, grave or serious in testifying 
your repugnance, but you were equally a doomed man; 
escape was impossible. Your host was in his turn 
eloquent, — authoritative, — facetious, — argumentative, 



272 Political Pamphlets 

— precatory, — pathetic, above all, pertinacious. No 
guest was known to escape the Leetle Anderson. The 
last time I experienced the laird's hospitality there 
were present at the evening meal the following cata- 
logue of guests : — a Bond-street dandy, of the most 
brilliant water, drawn thither by the temptation of grouse- 
shooting — a writer from the neighbouring borough (the 
lairds doer, I believe), — two country lairds, men of 
reserved and stiff habits — three sheep-farmers, as stiff- 
necked and stubborn as their own haltered rams — 
and I, Malachi Malagrowther, not facile or obvious to 
persuasion. There was also the Esculapius of the 
vicinity — one who gave, but elsewhere was never 
known to take medicine. All succumbed — each took, 
after various degrees of resistance according to his 
peculiar fashion, his own Leetle Anderson. The doer 
took a brace. On the event I am silent. None had 
reason to congratulate himself on his complaisance. 
The laird has slept with his ancestors for some years, 
remembered sometimes with a smile on account of his 
humorous eccentricities, always with a sigh when his 
surviving friends and neighbours reflect on his kindli- 
ness and genuine beneficence. I have only to add 
that I hope he has not bequeathed to the Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, otherwise so highly gifted, his in- 
vincible powers of persuading folks to take medicine, 
which their constitutions do not require. 

Have I argued my case too high in supposing that 



The Letters of Malachi M alagrowther 273 

the present intended legislative enactment is as in- 
applicable to Scotland as a pair of elaborate knee- 
buckles would be to the dress of a kilted Highlander ? 
I think not. 

I understand Lord Liverpool and the Chancellor 
of the Exchequer distinctly to have admitted the fact, 
that no distress whatever had originated in Scotland 
from the present issuing of small notes of the bankers 
established there, whether provincial in the strict sense, 
or sent abroad by branches of the larger establishments 
settled in the metropolis. No proof can be desired 
better than the admission of the adversary. 

Nevertheless, we have been positively informed by 
the newspapers that Ministers see no reason why any 
law adopted on this subject should not be imperative 
over all his Majesty's dominions, including Scotland, for 
uniformity s sake. In my opinion they might as well 
make a law that the Scotsman, for uniformity's sake, 
should not eat oatmeal, because it is found to give 
Englishmen the heartburn. If an ordinance prohibit- 
ing the oatcake, can be accompanied with a regulation 
capable of being enforced, that in future, for uni- 
formity's sake, our moors and uplands shall henceforth 
bear the purest wheat, I for one have no objection to 
the regulation. But till Ben Nevis be level with 
Norfolkshire, though the natural wants of the two 
nations may be the same, the extent of these wants, 
natural or commercial, and the mode of supplying 

T 



274 Political Pamphlets 

them, must be widely different, let the rule of uni- 
formity be as absolute as it will. The nation which 
cannot raise wheat, must be allowed to eat oat-bread ; 
the nation which is too poor to retain a circulating 
medium of the precious metals, must be permitted 
to supply its place with paper credit ; otherwise, they 
must go without food, and without currency. 

If I were called on, Mr. Journalist, I think I could 
give some reasons why the system of banking which 
has been found well adapted for Scotland is not proper 
for England, and why there is no reason for inflicting 
upon us the intended remedy ; in other words, why 
this political balsam of Fierabras which is to relieve 
Don Quixote, may have a great chance to poison 
Sancho. With this view, I will mention briefly some 
strong points of distinction affecting the comparative 
credit of the banks in England and in Scotland ; and 
they seem to furnish, to one inexperienced in political 
economies (upon the transcendental doctrines of 
which so much stress is now laid), very satisfactory 
reasons for the difference which is not denied to exist 
bewixt the effects of the same general system in 
different countries. 

In Scotland, almost all Banking Companies consist 
of a considerable number of persons, many of them 
men of landed property, whose landed estates, with the 
burthens legally affecting them, may be learned from 
the records, for the expense of a few shillings ; so that 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 275 

all the world knows, or may know, the general basis on 
which their credit rests, and the extent of real property, 
which, independent of their personal means, is respon- 
sible for their commercial engagements. In most bank- 
ing establishments this fund of credit is considerable, in 
others immense ; especially in those where the shares 
are numerous, and are held in small proportions, many 
of them by persons of landed estates, whose fortunes, 
however large, and however small their share of stock, 
must all be liable to the engagements of the Bank. 
In England, as I believe, the number of the partners 
engaged in a banking concern cannot exceed five ; and 
though of late years their landed property has been 
declared subject to be attacked by their commercial 
creditors, yet no one can learn, without incalculable 
trouble, the real value of that land, or with what 
mortgages it is burthened. Thus, ceteris paribus, the 
English banker cannot make his solvency manifest 
to the public, therefore cannot expect, or receive, the 
same unlimited trust, which is willingly and securely 
reposed in those of the same profession in Scotland. 

Secondly, the circulation of the Scottish bank-notes 
is free and unlimited ; an advantage arising from their 
superior degree of credit. They pass without a shadow 
of objection through the whole limits of Scotland, and, 
though they cannot be legally tendered, are current 
nearly as far as York in England. Those of English 
Banking Companies seldom extend beyond a very 



276 Political Pamphlets 

limited horizon : in two or three stages from the place 
where they are issued, many of them are objected to, 
and give perpetual trouble to any traveller who has 
happened to take them in change on the road. Even 
the most creditable provincial notes never approach 
London in a free tide — never circulate like blood to 
the heart, and from thence to the extremities, but are 
current within a limited circle ; often, indeed, so very 
limited, that the notes issued in the morning, to use 
an old simile, fly out like pigeons from the dovecot, 
and are sure to return in the evening to the spot 
which they have left at break of day. 

Owing to these causes, and others which I forbear 
mentioning, the profession of provincial Bankers in 
England is limited in its regular profits, and uncertain 
in its returns, to a degree unknown in Scotland ; and 
is, therefore, more apt to be adopted in the South by 
men of sanguine hopes and bold adventure (both fre- 
quently disproportioned to the extent of their capital), 
who sink in mines or other hazardous speculations 
the funds which their banking credit enables them to 
command, and deluge the country with notes, which, 
on some unhappy morning, are found not worth a 
penny — as those to whom the foul fiend has given 
apparent treasures are said in due time to discover 
they are only pieces of slate. 

I am aware it may be urged that the restrictions 
imposed on those English provincial Banks are 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 277 

necessary to secure the supremacy of the Bank of Eng- 
land ; on the same principle on which dogs, kept near 
the purlieus of a royal forest, were anciently lamed 
by the cutting off of one of the claws, to prevent their 
interfering with the royal sport. This is a very good 
regulation for England, for what I know; but why 
should the Scottish institutions, which do not, and 
cannot interfere with the influence of the Bank of 
England, be put on a level with those of which such 
jealousy is, justly or unjustly, entertained ? We receive 
no benefit from that immense establishment, which, 
like a great oak, overshadows England from Tweed 
to Cornwall. Why should our national plantations 
be cut down or cramped for the sake of what affords 
us neither shade nor shelter, and which, besides, can 
take no advantage by the injury done to us ? Why 
should we be subjected to a monopoly from which 
we derive no national benefit ? 

I have only to add that Scotland has not felt the 
slightest inconvenience from the want of specie, nay, 
that it has never been in request among them. A 
tradesman will take a guinea more unwillingly than a 
note of the same value — to the peasant the coin is 
unknown. No one ever wishes for specie save when 
upon a journey to England. In occasional runs upon 
particular houses, the notes of other Banking Com- 
panies have always been the value asked for — no 
holder of these notes ever demanded specie. The 



278 Political Pamphlets 

credit of one establishment might be doubted for 
the time — that of the general system was never 
brought into question. Even avarice, the most 
suspicious of passions, has in no instance I ever heard 
of, desired to compose her hoards by an accumulation 
of the precious metals. The confidence in the credit 
of our ordinary medium has not been doubted even 
in the dreams of the most irritable and jealous of 
human passions. 

All these considerations are so obvious that a 
statesman so acute as Mr. Robinson must have taken 
them in at the first glance, and must at the same 
time have deemed them of no weight, compared with 
the necessary conformity between the laws of the two 
kingdoms. I must, therefore, speak to the justice of 
this point of uniformity. 

Sir, my respected ancestor, Sir Mungo, when he 
had the distinguished honour to be whippings or 
rather whipped boy, to his Majesty King James the 
Sixth of gracious memory, was always, in virtue of his 
office, scourged when the king deserved flogging: 
and the same equitable rule seems to distinguish the 
conduct of Government towards Scotland, as one of 
the three United Kingdoms. If Pat is guilty of pecu- 
lation, Sister Peg loses her Boards of Revenue — if 
John Bull's cashiers mismanage his money -matters, 
those who have conducted Sister Margaret's to their 
own great honour, and her no less advantage, must 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 279 

be deprived of the power of serving her in future ; at 
least that power must be greatly restricted and limited. 

\ Quidquid delirant reges plectuntur Achivi.' 

That is to say, if our superiors of England and Ireland 
eat sour grapes, the Scottish teeth must be set on 
edge as well as their own. An uniformity in benefits 
may be well — an uniformity in penal measures, towards 
the innocent and the guilty, in prohibitory regulations, 
whether necessary or not, seems harsh law, and worse 
justice. 

This levelling system, not equitable in itself, is 
infinitely unjust, if a story, often told by my poor old 
grandfather, was true, which I own I am inclined to 
doubt. The old man, sir, had learned in his youth, 
or dreamed in his dotage, that Scotland had become 
an integral part of England, — not in right of conquest, 
or rendition, or through any right of inheritance — but 
in virtue of a solemn Treaty of Union. Nay, so 
distinct an idea had he of this supposed Treaty, that 
he used to recite one of its articles to this effect : — 
' That the laws in use within the kingdom of Scot- 
land, do, after the Union, remain in the same force 
as before, but alterable by the Parliament of Great 
Britain, with this difference between the laws con- 
cerning public right, policy, and civil government, 
and those which concern private right, that the 
former may be made the same through the whole 



280 Political Pamphlets 

United Kingdom ; but that no alteration be made on 
laws which concern private right, excepting for the 
evident utility of the subjects within Scotland? When 
the old gentleman came to the passage, which you 
will mark in italics, he always clenched his fist, and 
exclaimed, 'Nemo me impune lacessitl' which, I 
presume, are words belonging to the black art, since 
there is no one in the Modern Athens conjuror enough 
to understand their meaning, or at least to compre- 
hend the spirit of the sentiment which my grandfather 
thought they conveyed. 

I cannot help thinking, sir, that if there had been 
any truth in my grandfather's story, some Scottish 
member would, on the late occasion, have informed 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that, in virtue of 
this Treaty, it was no sufficient reason for innovating 
upon the private rights of Scotsmen in a most tender 
and delicate point, merely that the Right Honourable 
Gentleman saw no reason why the same law should 
not be current through the whole of his Majesty's 
dominions ; and that, on the contrary, it was incum- 
bent upon him to go a step further, and to show that 
the alteration proposed was for the evident utility 
of the subjects within Scotland, — a proposition dis- 
avowed by the Right Honourable Gentleman's candid 
admission, as well as by that of the Prime Minister, 
and contradicted in every circumstance by the actual 
state of the case. 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrozvther 281 

Methinks, sir, our ' Chosen Five and Forty,' sup- 
posing they had bound themselves to Ministers by 
such oaths of silence and obedience as are taken by 
Carthusian friars, must have had free-will and speech 
to express their sentiments, had they been possessed 
of so irrefragable an argument in such a case of 
extremity. The sight of a father's life in danger is 
said to have restored the power of language to the 
dumb ; and truly, the necessary defence of the rights 
of our native country is not, or at least ought not to 
be, a less animating motive. Lord Lauderdale almost 
alone interfered, and procured, to his infinite honour, 
a delay of six months in the extension of this act, — 
a sort of reprieve from the southern jougs, — by which 
we may have some chance of profiting, if, during 
the interval, we can show ourselves true Scotsmen, 
by some better proof than merely by being 'wise 
behind the hand.' 

In the first place, sir, I would have this old Treaty 
searched for, and should it be found to be still existing, 
I think it decides the question. For, how can it be 
possible that it should be for the ' evident utility ' of 
Scotland to alter her laws of private right, to the total 
subversion of a system under which she is admitted 
to have flourished for a century, and which has never 
within North Britain been attended with the incon- 
veniences charged against it in the sister country, 
where, by the way, it never existed ? Even if the old 



282 Political Pamphlets 

parchment should be voted obsolete, there would be 
some satisfaction in having it looked out and pre- 
served — not in the Register- Office, or Advocates' 
Library, where it might awaken painful recollections 
— but in the Museum of the Antiquaries, where, with 
the Solemn League and Covenant, the Letter of the 
Scottish Nobles to the Pope on the independence of 
their country, and other antiquated documents, once 
held in reverence, it might silently contract dust, yet 
remain to bear witness that such things had been. 

I earnestly hope, however, that an international 
league of such importance may still be found obligatory 
on both the high and the low contracting parties ; on 
that which has the power, and apparently the will, to 
break it, as well as on the weaker nation, who can- 
not, without incurring still worse, and more miserable 
consequences, oppose aggression, otherwise than by 
invoking the faith of treaties, and the national honour 
of Old England. 

In the second place, all ranks and bodies of men in 
North Britain (for all are concerned, the poor as well as 
the rich) should express by petition their sense of the 
injustice which is offered to the country, and the dis- 
tress which will probably be the necessary conse- 
quence. Without the power of issuing their own 
notes the Banks cannot supply the manufacturer 
with that credit which enables him to pay his work- 
men, and wait his return ; or accommodate the farmer 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 283 

with that fund which makes it easy for him to 
discharge his rent, and give wages to his labourers, 
while in the act of performing expensive operations 
which are to treble or quadruple the produce of his 
farm. The trustees on the high-roads and other 
public works, so ready to stake their personal credit 
for carrying on public improvements, will no longer 
possess the power of raising funds by doing so. 
The whole existing state of credit is to be altered 
from top to bottom, and Ministers are silent on any 
remedy which such a state of things would imperi- 
ously require. 

These are subjects worth struggling for, and rather 
of more importance than generally come before County 
Meetings. The English legislature seems inclined to 
stultify our Law Authorities in their department ; but 
let us at least try if they will listen to the united voice 
of a Nation in matters which so intimately concern its 
welfare, that almost every man must have formed a 
judgment on the subject, from something like per- 
sonal experience. For my part, I cannot doubt the 
result. 

Times are undoubtedly different from those of 
Queen Anne, when, Dean Swift having in a political 
pamphlet passed some sarcasms on the Scottish 
nation, as a poor and fierce people, the Scythians 
of Britain, — the Scottish peers, headed by the Duke 
of Argyll, went in a body to the ministers, and 



284 Political Pamphlets 

compelled them to disown the sentiments which had 
been expressed by their partisan, and offer a reward 
of three hundred pounds for the author of the libel, 
well known to be the best advocate and most inti- 
mate friend of the existing administration. They 
demanded also that the printer and publisher should 
be prosecuted before the House of Peers ; and 
Harley, however unwillingly, was obliged to yield to 
their demand. 

In the celebrated case of Porteous, the English 
legislature saw themselves compelled to desist from 
vindictive measures, on account of a gross offence 
committed in the metropolis of Scotland. In that 
of the Roman Catholic bill they yielded to the voice 
of the Scottish people, or rather of the Scottish mob, 
and declared the proposed alteration of the law 
should not extend to North Britain. The cases were 
different, in point of merit, though the Scots were 
successful in both. In the one, a boon of clemency 
was extorted ; in the other, concession was an act of 
decided weakness. But ought the present administra- 
tion of Great Britain to show less deference to our 
temperate and general remonstrance on a matter 
concerning ourselves only, than their predecessors 
did to the passions, and even the ill-founded and 
unjust prejudices, of our ancestors ? 

Times, indeed, have changed since those days, 
and circumstances also. We are no longer a poor. 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 285 

that is, so very poor a country and people ; and as we 
have increased in wealth, we have become somewhat 
poorer in spirit, and more loath to incur displeasure 
by contests upon mere etiquette, or national prejudice. 
But we have some grounds to plead for favour with 
England. We have borne our pecuniary impositions 
during a long war, with a patience the more exem- 
plary, as they lay heavier on us from our comparative 
want of means — our blood has flowed as freely as 
that of England or of Ireland — our lives and fortunes 
have become unhesitatingly devoted to the defence of 
the empire — our loyalty as warmly and willingly dis- 
played towards the person of our Sovereign. We 
have consented with submission, if not with cheerful- 
ness, to reductions and abolitions of public offices, 
required for the good of the state at large, but which 
must affect materially the condition, and even the 
respectability, of our overburthened aristocracy. We 
have in every respect conducted ourselves as good 
and faithful subjects of the general empire. 

We do not boast of these things as actual merits ; 
but they are at least duties discharged, and in an 
appeal to men of honour and of judgment, must 
entitle us to be heard with patience, and even defer- 
ence, on the management of our own affairs, if we 
speak unanimously, lay aside party feeling, and use 
the voice of one leaf of the holy Trefoil, — one distinct 
and component part of the United Kingdoms. 



286 Political Pamphlets 

Let no consideration deter us from pleading our 
own cause temperately but firmly, and we shall cer- 
tainly receive a favourable audience. Even our 
acquisition of a little wealth, which might abate our 
courage on other occasions, should invigorate us to 
unanimous perseverance at the present crisis, when 
the very source of our national prosperity is directly, 
though unwittingly, struck at. Our plaids are, I 
trust, not yet sunk into Jewish gaberdines, to be 
wantonly spit upon • nor are we yet bound to ' re- 
ceive the insult with a patient shrug.' But exertion 
is now demanded on other accounts than those of 
mere honourable punctilio. Misers themselves will 
struggle in defence of their property, though tolerant 
of all aggressions by which that is not threatened. 
Avarice herself, however mean-spirited, will rouse to 
defend the wealth she possesses, and preserve the 
means of gaining more. Scotland is now called 
upon to rally in defence of the sources of her 
national improvement, and the means of increasing 
it; upon which, as none are so much concerned in 
the subject, none can be such competent judges as 
Scotsmen themselves. 

I cannot believe so generous a people as the 
English, so wise an administration as the present, 
will disregard our humble remonstrances, merely 
because they are made in the form of peaceful 
entreaty, and not secundum perfervidum ingenium 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 287 

Scotorum, with 'durk and pistol at our belt.' It 
would be a dangerous lesson to teach the empire at 
large, that threats can extort what is not yielded to 
reasonable and respectful remonstrance. 

But this is not all. The principle of ' uniformity 
of laws,' if not manfully withstood, may have other 
blessings in store for us. Suppose, that when finished 
with blistering Scotland when in perfect health, England 
should find time and courage to withdraw the veil 
from the deep cancer which is gnawing her own 
bowels, and make an attempt to stop the fatal pro- 
gress of her poor-rates. Some system or other must 
be proposed in its place — a grinding one it must be, 
for it is not an evil to be cured by palliatives. Sup- 
pose the English, for uniformity's sake, insist that 
Scotland, which is at present free from this foul and 
shameful disorder, should nevertheless be included in 
the severe treatment which the disease demands, how 
would the landholders of Scotland like to undergo the 
scalpel and cautery, merely because England requires 
to be scarified ? 

Or again ; — Supposing England should take a 
fancy to impart to us her sanguinary criminal code, 
which, too cruel to be carried into effect, gives every 
wretch that is condemned a chance of one to twelve 
that he shall not be executed, and so turns the law into 
a lottery — would this be an agreeable boon to North 
Britain ? 



288 Political Pamphlets 

Once more ; — What if the English ministers should 
feel disposed to extend to us their equitable system of 
process respecting civil debt, which divides the advan- 
tages so admirably betwixt debtor and creditor — That 
equal dispensation of justice, which provides that an 
imprisoned debtor, if a rogue, may remain in undis- 
turbed possession of a great landed estate, and enjoy in 
a jail all the luxuries of Sardanapalus, while the wretch 
to whom he owes money is starving; and that, to balance 
the matter, a creditor, if cruel, may detain a debtor in 
prison for a lifetime, and make, as the established phrase 
goes, dice of his bones — would this admirable reciprocity 
of privilege, indulged alternately to knave and tyrant, 
please Saunders better than his own humane action of 
Cessio, and his equitable process of Adjudication ? 

I will not insist further on such topics, for I dare- 
say that these apparent enormities in principle are, 
in England where they have operation, modified and 
corrected in practice by circumstances unknown to 
me ; so that, in passing judgment on them, I may 
myself fall into the error I deprecate, of judging of 
foreign laws without being aware of all the premisses. 
Neither do I mean that we should struggle with illiber- 
ality against any improvements which can be borrowed 
from English principle. I would only desire that such 
ameliorations were adopted, not merely because they 
are English, but because they are suited to be assi- 
milated with the laws of Scotland, and lead, in short, 



The Letters of Malachi MalagrowtJier 289 

to her evident utility ; and this on the principle, that 
in transplanting a tree, little attention need be paid 
to the character of the climate and soil from which 
it is brought, although the greatest care must be taken 
that those of the situation to which it is transplanted 
are fitted to receive it. It would be no reason for 
planting mulberry-trees in Scotland, that they luxuriate 
in the south of England. There is sense in the old 
proverb, ' Ilk land has its ain lauch.' 

In the present case, it is impossible to believe the 
extension of these restrictions to Scotland can be for 
the evident utility of the country, which has prospered 
so long and so uniformly under directly the contrary 
system. 

It is very probable I may be deemed illiberal in 
all this reasoning ; but if to look for information to 
practical results, rather than to theoretical principles, 
and to argue from the effect of the experience of a 
century, rather than the deductions of a modern 
hypothesis, be illiberal, I must sit down content with 
a censure, which will include wiser men than I. The 
philosophical tailors of Laputa, who wrought by mathe- 
matical calculation, had, no doubt, a supreme con- 
tempt for those humble fashioners who went to work 
by measuring the person of their customer; but 
Gulliver tells us, that the worst clothes he ever wore, 
were constructed upon abstract principles ; and truly, 
I think, we have seen some laws, and may see more, 

u 



290 Political Pamphlets 

not much better adapted to existing circumstances, 
than the Captain's philosophical uniform to his actual 
person. 

It is true, that every wise statesman keeps sound 
and general political principles in his eye, as the pilot 
looks upon his compass to discover his true course. 
But this true course cannot always be followed out 
straight and diametrically ; it must be altered from 
time to time, nay sometimes apparently abandoned, 
on account of shoals, breakers, and headlands, not to 
mention contrary winds. The same obstacles occur 
to the course of the statesman. The point at which 
he aims may be important, the principle on which 
he steers may be just ; yet the obstacles arising from 
rooted prejudices, from intemperate passions, from 
ancient practices, from a different character of people, 
from varieties in climate and soil, may cause a direct 
movement upon his ultimate object to be attended 
with distress to individuals, and loss to the com- 
munity, which no good man would wish to occasion, 
and with dangers which no wise man would voluntarily 
choose to encounter. 

Although I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
has been rather precipitate in the decided opinion 
which he is represented to have expressed on this 
occasion, I am far from entertaining the slightest dis- 
respect for the right honourable gentleman. ' I hear 
as good exclamation upon him as on any man in 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrcwther 291 

Messina, and though I am but a poor man, I am 
glad to hear it.' But a decided attachment to 
abstract principle, and to a spirit of generalising, is 
— like a rash rider on a headstrong horse — very apt 
to run foul of local obstacles, which might have been 
avoided by a more deliberate career, where the nature 
of the ground had been previously considered. 

I make allowance for the temptation natural to an 
ingenious and active mind. There is a natural pride 
in following out an universal and levelling principle. 
It seems to augur genius, force of conception, and 
steadiness of purpose ; qualities which every legislator 
is desirous of being thought to possess. On the other 
hand, the study of local advantages and impediments 
demands labour and inquiry, and is rewarded after 
all only with the cold and parsimonious praise due 
to humble industry. It is no less true, however, that 
measures which go straight and direct to a great 
general object, without noticing intervening impedi- 
ments, must often resemble the fierce progress of the 
thunderbolt or the cannon-ball, those dreadful agents, 
which, in rushing right to their point, care not what 
ruin they make by the way. The sounder and 
more moderate policy, accommodating its measures 
to exterior circumstances, rather resembles the judi- 
cious course of a well-conducted highway, which, 
turning aside frequently from its direct course, 

' Winds round the corn-field and the hill of vines,' 



292 Political Pamphlets 

and becomes devious, that it may respect property 
and avoid obstacles ; thus escaping even temporary 
evils, and serving the public no less in its more circuit- 
ous, than it would have done in its direct course. 

Can you tell me, sir, if this uniformity of civil 
institutions, which calls for such sacrifices, be at all 
descended from, or related to, a doctrine nearly of the 
same nature, called Conformity in religious doctrine, 
very fashionable about one hundred and fifty years since, 
which undertook to unite the jarring creeds of the 
United Kingdom to one common standard, and excited 
a universal strife by the vain attempt, and a thousand 
fierce disputes, in which she 

' umpire sate, 

And by decision more embroiled the fray ' ? 

Should Uniformity have the same pedigree, Malachi 
Malagrowther proclaims her ' a hawk of a very bad 
nest' 

The universal opinion of a whole kingdom, founded 
upon a century's experience, ought not to be lightly 
considered as founded in ignorance and prejudice. I 
am something of an agriculturist ; and in travelling 
through the country I have often had occasion to 
wonder that the inhabitants of particular districts 
had not adopted certain obvious improvements in 
cultivation. But, upon inquiry, I have usually found 
out that appearances had deceived me, and that I 
had not reckoned on particular local circumstances, 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 293 

which either prevented the execution of the system I 
should have theoretically recommended, or rendered 
some other more advantageous in the particular cir- 
cumstances. 

I do not therefore resist theoretical innovation in 
general ; I only humbly desire it may not outrun the 
suggestions arising from the experience of ages. I 
would have the necessity felt and acknowledged before 
old institutions are demolished — the evident utility of 
every alteration demonstrated before it is adopted upon 
mere speculation. I submit our ancient system to the 
primary knife of the legislature, but would not willingly 
see our reformers employ a weapon, which, like the 
sword of Jack the Giant-Killer, cuts before the point. 

It is always to be considered, that in human 
affairs, the very best imaginable result is seldom to be 
obtained, and that it is wise to content ourselves with 
the best which can be got. This principle speaks with 
a voice of thunder against violent innovation, for the 
sake of possible improvement, where things are already 
well. We ought not to desire better bread than is 
made of wheat. Our Scotch proverb warns us to Let 
weel bide ; and all the world has heard of the untrans- 
latable Italian epitaph upon the man, who died of 
taking physic to make him better, when he was already 
in health. — I am, Mr. Journalist, yours, 

Malachi Malagrowther. 



294 Political Pamphlets 

Postscript 

Since writing these hasty thoughts, I hear it re- 
ported that we are to have an extension of our pre- 
carious reprieve, and that our six months are to be 
extended to six years. I would not have Scotland 
trust to this hollow truce. The measure ought, like 
all others, to be canvassed on its merits, and frankly 
admitted or rejected ; it has been stirred and ought 
to be decided. I request my countrymen not to be 
soothed into inactivity by that temporising, and, I will 
say, unmanly vacillation. Government is pledged to 
nothing by taking an open course ; for if the bill, so 
far as applicable to Scotland, is at present absolutely 
laid aside, there can be no objection to their resum- 
ing it at any period, when from change of circum- 
stances, it may be advantageous to Scotland, and 
when, for what I know, it may be welcomed as a 
boon. 

But if held over our heads as a minatory measure, 
to take place within a certain period, what can the 
event be but to cripple and ultimately destroy the 
present system, on which a direct attack is found at 
present inexpedient ? Can the bankers continue to 
conduct their profession on the same secure footing, 
with an abrogation of it in prospect? Must it not 
cease to be what it has hitherto been — a business 
carried on both for their own profit, and for the 



The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 295 

accommodation of the country? Instead of employing 
their capital in the usual channels, must they not in 
self-defence employ it in forming others ? Will not 
the substantial and wealthy withdraw their funds 
from that species of commerce ? And may not the 
place of these be supplied by men of daring adven- 
ture; without corresponding capital, who will take a 
chance of wealth or ruin in the chances of the game ? 
If it is the absolute and irrevocable determination 
that the bill is to be extended to us, the sooner the 
great penalty is inflicted the better ; for in politics and 
commerce, as in all the other affairs of life, absolute 
and certain evil is better than uncertainty and pro- 
tracted suspense. 



NOTES 



P. 3- 

The exclusion — of James from the succession. 
The rebellion— Monmouth's. 



P. 6. 

The Quakers. — A hit, of course, at Penn. 

P. 17. 
Piqueer, 'do outpost duty,' 'raid.' 

P. 18. 

Lords of the Articles. — A well-known body in the older 
Scottish Constitution, through whom only legislation could be 
originated, and who thus almost nullified the powers of Parlia- 
ment. 

P. 20. 
Squeaziness = ' squeamishness, ' ' queasiness. ' 



298 Notes 

It is impossible. — Another form of ' No bishop no king.' 
The new converts. — After the Revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes. 

P. 22. 

T. W. is, of course, a mere fancy signature. It might stand 
for ' True Wellwisher ' or anything. The wiseacres took it as 
= ' W. T.,' William Temple. 

P. 27. 

Neither, for ' too, ' is colloquial but rather picturesque. Cf. 
the famous ' And yet but yaw neither ' in Hamlet. 

P. 47- 

I have not thought it desirable to reproduce the abundance* 
of italics with which the original is furnished. They no doubt 
appealed to the vulgar, as where poor Mr. Wood is described 
(p. 50) as ' a mean ordinary man, a hardware dealer.'' But the 
vigour of the onslaught is wholly independent of them. 

P. 50. 
Written — by Swift himself. 

P. 54- 

Bere, or 'bear,' also 'bigg,' a kind of barley largely culti- 
vated in Ireland, Scotland, and Northern England. It has 
six rows in the ear, and will grow in much poorer ground and a 
much damper and rougher climate than the two-rowed variety. 
It is also, I believe, still thought to give the best whisky, if 
not the best beer, when malted. 



Notes 299 

P. 55. 

Conolly — Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. 

P. 56. 

Pistole — about ten shillings. 

P. 60. 

Brought to the bullion seems here to have the meaning of the 
French billonner or envoyer au billon, ' to melt for recoining.' 

P. 74- 

Our Omar's statue. — The statue of George I. on Essex 
Bridge, Dublin. 

P. 89. 

Contignation. — This rather pedantic, and now, I think, quite 
obsolete word (from tignum, ' beam ') means ' having a common 
or continuous roof.' 

P. 99- 

The slackness of England in taking advantage of the Vendean 
and Chouan movements, of which Burke here complains, has 
never been fully explained. The poltroonery of the Bourbon 
princes, and the factions of the emigrants, throw a certain but 
not a complete light on it ; and though conjectural explanations 
are obvious enough, there is little positive evidence to support 
them. 



300 Notes 

P. 107. 

But when the possibility . . . that the. — It will probably 
seem to a modern reader that either ' that ' or ' the ' has crept 
in improperly. It might be so ; but Burke still maintained the 
authoritative but rather inelegant tradition by which 'that,' like 
the French que, could replace any such antecedent word as 
'when,' 'because,' etc. 

P. 112. 

Louis the Sixteenth. — To this is appended a note in the 
editions beginning, ' It may be right to do justice to Louis 
XVI. He did what he could to destroy the double diplomacy 
of France.' The subject has of late years received considerable 
illustration in the Duke of Broglie's Le Secret du Roi, and other 
works by the same author. 

P. 114. 

Montalembert. — Marc Rene, Marquis de (1.7 14-1800), a 
voluminous military writer. 

P. 124. 
Harrington — of the Oceana. 

P. 134. 

Dear Abraham. — ' Peter Plymley ' addresses his Letters to 
'my brother Abraham, who lives in the country,' and is a 
parson. 

P. 136. 

Baron Maseres. — Cursitor Baron of the Exchequer, a de- 
scendant of Huguenots, very well thought of by his con- 
temporaries. Dr. Rennel I know not, unless he was the 
Herodotus man. 



-, Canning. 



Notes 301 

P- 137. 

P. 138. 

Dr. Duigenan. — A delightful person who, in his hot youth, 
as a junior Fellow of T. C, D., threatened to 'bulge the Pro- 
vost's ' [Provost Hely Hutchinson's] ' eye,' and was afterwards 
a pillar of Protestantism. 



P. 144. 

This light and frivolous jester was not the Rev. Sydney 
Smith, but George Canning, Esq. 



P. 154. 

The pecuniary Rose. — 'Old George' Rose, Pitt's right hand. 
He was rather heavily rewarded with places and pensions ; but 
even Liberals now admit that the country has hardly had an 
abler official. 

Lord ffaivkesbzvy, Jenkinson, better known as Lord Liver- 
pool. 

P. 157. 
Tickell — the Rolliad Tickell. 



P. 170. 
Joel — Peter's nephew and Abraham's son. 



302 Notes 

P. 193. 

Paint in the most horrid colours. — See, for instance, The 
Bloody Buoy and The Cannibal's Progress, by William Cobbett. 

P. 225. 

Flogging. — Some of the militia mutinied at Ely, and were 
punished, the guard on the occasion being furnished by the 
cavalry of the German Legion. Cobbett noticed this in the 
most inflammatory manner, and it being war time, was indicted, 
tried, found guilty, and sentenced as he describes. 

P. 229. 

Monks and friars. — A time came when Cobbett thought and 
wrote very differently of these persons. But that was his way. 

P. 245. 

Foundal. — I do not know whether Cobbett invented this 
equivalent for trouvaille, ' windfall,' or not. His notable 
scheme for breaking the Bank is a good example of him in his 
insaner moods. 

P. 253. 
The Duenna — Sheridan's. 

P. 256. 

The Jury Court. — Trial by jury in civil cases was only 
introduced into Scotland in 181 5. 



Notes 303 

P. 259. 

Evasive answer — to the effect that each queen was the 
fairest woman in her own country. 

P. 272. 
Doer = ' factor ' or agent. 

P. 277. 
Them — as if ' Scotsmen ' had been written for ' Scotland. ' 

P. 281. 

Chosen Five and Forty — the original number of members 
assigned to Scotland. 

P. 283. 
Political pamphlet — 'The Public Spirit of the Whigs.' 

P. 287. 
Durk, sic in original. 

P. 288. 

Cessio, sc. bonorum, whereby a debtor on giving up his pro- 
perty could be relieved of liabilities. 

Adjudication, whereby a creditor could attach landed as 
well as personal property. 

P. 289. 
Lauch = 'laugh.' 



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